BY 

ARTHUR C. BENSON 

FELLOW OF MAGDALENE COLLEGE 
CAMBRIDGE 

THE UPTON LETTERS 

FROM A COLLEGE 
WINDOW 

BESIDE STILL WATERS 

THE ALTAR FIRE 

THE SCHOOLMASTER 

AT LARGE 

THE SILENT ISLE 

JOHN RUSKIN 

LEAVES OF THE TREE 

CHILD OF THE DAWN 

PAUL THE MINSTREL 

THY ROD AND THY 

STAFF 

ALONG THE ROAD 
JOYOUS CARD 



JOYOUS CARD 



BY 

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON 

FELLOW OF MAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 

Zbc mnicfterbocftcr press 
1913 









Copyright, 19 13 

BY 

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON 



Ube 1knfcf{erboc1ier press, l^ew Jgorb 



©CI.A35134 



Zo 



ALL MY FRIENDS 



KNOWN AND UNKNOWN 

I Dedicate This Book 



PREFACE 

It is a harder thing than it ought to be to 
write openly and frankly of things private 
and sacred. Secretiim meum mihi! — "My 
secret is my own!" — cried St. Francis in a 
harrowed moment. But I believe that the 
instinct to guard and hoard the inner life is 
one that ought to be resisted. Secrecy seems 
to me now a very uncivilised kind of virtue, 
after all ! We have all of us, or most of us, a 
quiet current of intimate thought, which 
flows on, gently and resistlessly, in the back- 
ground of our lives, the volume and spring of 
which we cannot alter or diminish, because 
it rises far away at some unseen source, like 
a stream which flows through grassy pastures, 
and is fed by rain which falls on unknown 
hills from the clouds of heaven. This inner 
thought is hardly affected by the busy incid- 
ents of life — our work, our engagements, our 



VI Preface 

public intercourse; but because it represents 
the self which we are always alone with, it 
makes up the greater part of our life, and is 
much more our real and true life than the 
life which we lead in public. It contains the 
things which we feel and hope, rather than 
what we say; and the fact that we do not 
speak our inner thoughts is what more than 
anything else keeps us apart from each other. 
In this book I have said, or tried to say, 
just what I thought and as I thought it ; and 
as it is a book which recommends a studied 
quietness and a cheerful serenity of life, I 
have put my feelings to a vigorous test, by 
writing it, not when I was at ease and in 
leisure, but in the very thickest and fullest 
of my work. I thought that if the kind of 
quiet that I recommended had any force or 
weight at all, it should be the sort of quiet 
which I still could realise and value in a life 
full of engagements and duties and business, 
and that if it could be developed on a back- 
ground of that kind, it might have a worth 
which it could not have if it were gently 



Preface 



vu 



conceived in peaceful days and untroubled 
hours. 

So it has all been written in spaces of hard- 
driven work, when the day never seemed long 
enough for all I had to do, between interrup- 
tions and interviews and teaching and meet- 
ings. But the sight and scent that I shall 
always connect with it, is that of a great lilac- 
bush which stands just outside my study 
window, and which day by day in this bright 
and chilly spring has held up its purple 
clusters, overtopping the dense, rich, pale 
foliage, against a blue and cloudless sky; 
and when the wind has been in the north, as 
it has often been, has filled my room with 
the scent of breaking buds. How often, as 
I wrote, have I cast a sidelong look at the 
lilac-bush! How often has it appeared to 
beckon me away from my papers to a freer 
and more fragrant air outside! But it 
seemed to me that I was perhaps obeying the 
call of the lilac best — though how far away 
from its freshness and sweetness! — if I tried 
to make my own busy life, which I do not 



Vlll 



Preface 



pretend not to enjoy, break into such flower 
as it could, and give out what the old books 
call its "spicery," such as it is. 

Because the bloom, the colour, the scent, 
is all there, if I could but express them. That 
is the truth! I do not claim to make them, 
to cause them, to create them, any more than 
the lilac could engender the scent of roses or 
of violets. Nor do I profess to do faithfully 
all that I say in my book that it is well to do. 
That is the worst, and yet perhaps it is the 
best, of books, that one presents in them one's 
hopes, dreams, desires, visions, more than 
one's dull and mean performances. Als ich 
kann! That is the best one can do and say. 

It is our own fault, and not the fault of 
our visions, that we cannot always say what 
we think in talk, even to our best friends. 
We begin to do so, perhaps, and we see a 
shadow gather. Either the friend does not 
understand, or he does not care, or he thinks 
it all unreal and affected ; and then there falls 
on us a foolish shyness, and we become not 
what we are, but what we think the friend 



Preface 



IX 



would like to think us; and so he "gets to 
know," as he calls it, not what is really there, 
but what he chooses should be there. 

But with pen in hand, and the blessed 
white paper before one, there is no need to be 
anything in the world but what one is. Our 
dignity must look after itself, and the dignity 
that we claim is worth nothing, especially if 
it is falsely claimed. But even the meanest 
flower that blows may claim to blossom as it 
can, and as indeed it must. In the democracy 
of flowers, even the dandelion has a right to a 
place, if it can find one, and to a vote, if it 
can get one; and even if it cannot, the wind 
is kind to it, and floats its arrowy down far 
afield, by wood and meadow, and into the 
unclaimed waste at last. 



CONTENTS 






CHAPTER 

I. — Prelude . 






PAGE 
I 


II. — Ideas 






7 


III. — Poetry 






II 


IV. — Poetry and Life 






i6 


v.— Art . 






24 


VI. — Art and Morality 






39 


VII. — Interpretation 






52 


VIII. — Education 






61 


IX. — Knowledge 






67 


X. — Growth . 






79 


XI. — Emotion . 






88 


XII. — Memory . 






98 


XIII. — Retrospect 




. 


. Ill 


XIV.— Humour . 




• 


. 121 



di 


Contents 








CHAPTER 




PAGE 


XV.- 


-Visions 






135 


XVI.- 


—Thought 






143 


XVII.- 


—Accessibility 






155 


XVIII.- 


—Sympathy 






168 


XIX.- 


—Science 






. 178 


XX.- 


—Work . 






. 188 


XXI.- 


—Hope 






. 196 


XXII.- 


—Experience . 






209 


XXIIL- 


—Faith . 






219 


XXIV.- 


—Progress 






231 


XXV.- 


—The Sense of Beauty 




241 


XXVI.- 


—The Principle of Beauty 


. 250 


XXVIL- 


—Life 


. 


, 


• 259 



JOYOUS GARD 



Joyous Gard 



PRELUDE 



The Castle of Joyous Gard in the Morte 
d' Arthur was Sir Lancelot's own castle, that 
he had won with his own hands. It was 
full of victual, and all manner of mirth and 
disport. It was hither that the wounded 
knight rode as fast as his horse might run, 
to tell Sir Lancelot of the misuse and capture 
of Sir Palamedes; and hence Lancelot often 
issued forth, to rescue those that were 
oppressed, and to do knightly deeds. 

It was true that Lancelot afterwards 
named it Dolorous Gard, but that was because 
he had used it unworthily, and was cast out 
from it; but it recovered its old name again 



2 Prelude 

when they conveyed his body thither, after 
he had purged his fault by death. It was 
on the morning of the day when they set out, 
that the Bishop who had been with him when 
he died, and had given him all the rites that 
a Christian man ought to have, was dis- 
pleased when they woke him out of his sleep, 
because, as he said, he was so merry and well 
at ease. And when they inquired the reason 
of his mirth, the Bishop said, "Here was 
Lancelot with me, with more angels than 
ever I saw men upon one day." So it was 
well with that great knight at the last ! 

I have called this book of mine by the 
name of Joyous Card, because it speaks of a 
stronghold that we can win with our own 
hands, where we can abide in great content, 
so long as we are careful not to linger there 
in sloth and idleness, but are ready to ride 
abroad at the call for help. The only time 
in his life when Lancelot was deaf to that 
call, was when he shut himself up in the 
Castle to enjoy the love that was his single 
sin. And it was that sin that cost him so 



The Fortress 3 

dear, and lost the Castle its old and beauti- 
ful name. But when the angels made glad 
over the sinner who repented, as it is their 
constant use to do, and when it was only 
remembered of Lancelot that he had been 
a peerless knight, the name came back to 
the Castle ; and that name is doubtless hidden 
now under some name of commoner use, 
whatever and wherever it may be. 

In the Pilgrim's Progress we read how 
willing Mr. Interpreter was, in the House 
that was full of so many devices and surprises, 
to explain to the pilgrims the meaning of all 
the fantastic emblems and comfortable sights 
that he showed them. And I do not think 
it spoils a parable, but rather improves it, 
that it should have its secret meaning made 
plain. 

The Castle of Joyous Card then, which 
each of us can use, if we desire it, is the 
fortress of beauty and joy. We cannot walk 
into it by right, but must win it; and in a 
world like this, where there is much that is 
anxious and troublesome, we ought, if we 



4 Prelude 

can, to gain such a place, and provide it with 
all that we need, where we may have our 
seasons of rest and refreshment. It must 
not be idle and selfish joyance that we take 
there; it must be the interlude to toil and 
fight and painful deeds, and we must be ready 
to sally out in a moment when it is demanded 
of us. Now, if the winning of such a fortress 
of thought is hard, it is also dangerous when 
won, because it tempts us to immure our- 
selves in peace, and only observe from afar 
the plain of life, which lies all about the 
Castle, gazing down through the high win- 
dows; to shut out the wind and the rain, as 
well as the cries and prayers of those who have 
been hurt and dismayed by wrongful usage. 
If we do that, the day will come when we 
shall be besieged in our Castle, and ride 
away vanquished and disgraced, to do what 
we have neglected and forgotten. 

But it is not only right, it is natural and 
wise, that we should have a stronghold in 
our minds, where we should frequent cour- 
teous and gentle and knightly company — 



The Knightly Spirit 5 

the company of all who have loved beauty 
wisely and purely, such as poets and artists. 
Because we make a very great mistake if we 
allow the common course and use of the 
world to engulf us wholly. We must not 
be too dainty for the work of the world, but 
we may thankfully believe that it is only a 
mortal discipline, and that our true life is 
elsewhere, hid with God. If we grow to 
believe that life and its cares and business 
are all, we lose the freshness of life, just as 
we lose the strength of life if we reject its 
toil. But if we go at times to our Joyous 
Gardy we can bring back into common life 
something of the grace and seemliness and 
courtesy of the place. For the end of life is 
that we should do humble and common 
things in a fine and courteous manner, and 
mix with simple affairs, not condescendingly 
or disdainfully, but with all the eagerness 
and modesty of the true knight. 

This little book then is an account, as far 
as I can give it, of what we may do to help 
ourselves in the matter, by feeding and 



6 Prelude 

nurturing the finer and sweeter thought, 
which, Hke all delicate things, often perishes 
from indifference and inattention. Those of 
us who are sensitive and imaginative and 
faint-hearted often miss our chance of better 
things by not forming plans and designs for 
our peace. We lament that we are hurried 
and pressed and occupied, and we cry, 
" Yet, oh, the place could I hut find!'' 
But that is because we expect to be con- 
ducted thither, without the trouble of the 
journey! Yet we can, like the wise King 
of Troy, build the walls of our castle to 
music, if we will, and see to the fit providing 
of the place; it needs only that we should 
set about it in earnest; and as I have often 
gratefully found that a single word of another 
can fall into the mind like a seed, and quicken 
to life while one sleeps, breaking unexpect- 
edly into bloom, I will here say what comes 
into my mind to say, and point out the towers 
that I think I discern rising above the tangled 
forest, and glimmering tall and shapely and 
seciu'e at the end of many an open avenue. 



II 



IDEAS 



There are certain great ideas which, if we 
have any intelHgence and thoughtfulness at 
all, we cannot help coming across the track 
of, just as when we walk far into the deep 
country, in the time of the blossoming of 
flowers, we step for a moment into a waft of 
fragrance, cast upon the air from orchard 
or thicket or scented field of bloom. 

These ideas are very various in quality; 
some of them deliciously haunting and 
transporting, some grave and solemn, some 
painfully sad and strong. Some of them 
seem to hint at unseen beauty and joy, some 
have to do with problems of conduct and 
duty, some with the relation in which we 
wish to stand or are forced to stand with 
other human beings; some are questionings 
7 



8 Ideas 

born of grief and pain, what the meaning 
of sorrow is, whether pain has a further in- 
tention, whether the spirit survives the Hfe 
which is all that we can remember of exist- 
ence; but the strange thing about all these 
ideas is that we find them suddenly in the 
mind and soul; we do not seem to invent 
them, though we cannot trace them; and 
even if we find them in books that we read 
or words that we hear, they do not seem 
wholly new to us; we recognise them as 
things that we have dimly felt and perceived, 
and the reason why they often have so mys- 
terious an effect upon us is that they seem 
to take us outside of ourselves, further back 
than we can recollect, beyond the faint 
horizon, into something as wide and great 
as the illimitable sea or the depths of sunset 
sky. 

Some of these ideas have to do with the 
constitution of society, the combined and 
artificial peace in which human beings live, 
and then they are political ideas; or they 
deal with such things as numbers, curves, 



Quality 9 

classes of animals and plants, the soil of the 
earth, the changes of the seasons, the laws of 
weight and mass, and then they are scientific 
ideas; some have to do with right and wrong 
conduct, actions and qualities, and then they 
are religious or ethical ideas. But there is 
a class of thoughts which belong precisely to 
none of these things, but which are concerned 
with the perception of beauty, in forms and 
colours, musical sounds, human faces and 
limbs, words majestic or sweet; and this 
sense of beauty may go further, and may 
be discerned in qualities, regarded not from 
the point of view of their rightness and 
justice, but according as they are fine and 
noble, evoking our admiration and our desire ; 
and these are poetical ideas. 

It is not of course possible exactly to clas- 
sify ideas, because there is a great overlap- 
ping of them and a wide interchange. The 
thought of the slow progress of man from 
something rude and beastlike, the statement 
of the astronomer about the swarms of 
worlds swimming in space, may awaken the 



10 Ideas 

sense of poetry which is in its essence the 
sense of wonder. I shall not attempt in 
these few pages to limit and define the sense 
of poetry. I shall merely attempt to describe 
the kind of effect it has or may have in life, 
what our relation is or may be to it, what 
claim it may be said to have upon us, whether 
we can practise it, and whether we ought 
to do so. 



Ill 



POETRY 



I WAS reading the other day a volume of 
lectures delivered by Mr. Mackail at Oxford, 
as Professor of Poetry there. Mr. Mackail 
began by being a poet himself; he married 
the daughter of a great and poetical artist, 
Sir Edward Bume- Jones; he has written 
the Life of William Morris, which I think is 
one of the best biographies in the language, 
in its fine proportion, its seriousness, its 
vividness; and indeed all his writing has the 
true poetical quality. I hope he even con- 
trives to communicate it to his departmental 
work in the Board of Education ! 

He says in the preface to his lectures: 

"Poetry is the controller of sullen care and 

frantic passion; it is the companion in youth 

of desire and love; it is the power which in 

II 



12 Poetry 

later years dispels the ills of life — labour, 
penury, pain, disease, sorrow, death itself; 
it is the inspiration, from youth to age, and 
in all times and lands, of the noblest human 
motives and ardours, of glory, of generous 
shame, of freedom and the unconquerable 
mind." 

In these fine sentences it will be seen that 
Mr. Mackail makes a very high and majestic 
claim indeed for poetry: no less than the 
claim of art, chivalry, patriotism, love, and 
religion all rolled into one! If that claim 
could be substantiated, no one in the world 
could be excused for not putting everything 
else aside and pursuing poetry, because it 
would seem to be both the cure for all the ills of 
life, and the inspirer of all high-hearted effort. 
It would be indeed the one thing needful! 

But what I do not think Mr. Mackail 
makes quite clear is whether he means by 
poetry the expression in verse of all these 
great ideas, or whether he means a spirit 
much larger and mightier than what is com- 
monly called poetry ; which indeed appears 



Poetry and Verse 13 

in verse only at a single glowing point, as the 
electric spark leaps bright and hot between 
the coils of dark and cold wire. 

I think it is a little confusing that he does 
not state more definitely what he means by 
poetry. Let us take another interesting and 
suggestive definition. It was Coleridge who 
said, "The opposite of poetry is not prose but 
science ; the opposite of prose is not poetry 
but s^erse." That seems to me an even more 
fertile statement. It means that poetry 
is a certain sort of emotion, which may be 
gentle or vehement, but can be found both 
in verse and prose; and that its opposite is 
the unemotional classification of phenomena, 
the accurate statement of material laws; and 
that poetry is by no means the rhythmical 
and metrical expression of emotion, but 
emotion itself, whether it be expressed or not. 

I do not wholly demur to Mr. Mackail's 
statement, if it may be held to mean that 
poetry is the expression of a sort of rapturous 
emotion, evoked by beauty, whether that 
beauty is seen in the forms and colours of 



14 Poetry 

earth, its gardens, fields, woods, hills, seas, 
its sky-spaces and sunset glories; or in the 
beauty of human faces and movements; or 
in noble endurance or generous action. For 
that is the one essential quality of poetry, 
that the thing or thought, whatever it is, 
should strike the mind as beautiful, and 
arouse in it that strange and wistful longing 
which beautiful things arouse. It is hard to 
define that longing, but it is essentially a 
desire, a claim to draw near to something 
desirable, to possess it, to be thrilled by it, 
to continue in it; the same emotion which 
made the apostle say at the sight of his 
Lord transfigured in glory, "Master, it is 
good for us to be here!" 

Indeed we know very well what beauty is, 
or rather we have all within us a standard 
by which we can instinctively test the beauty 
of a sight or a sound; but it is not that we 
all agree about the beauty of different things. 
Some see a great deal more than others, and 
some eyes and ears are delighted and pleased 
by what to more trained and fastidious senses 



The Sense of Beauty 15 

seems coarse and shocking and vulgar. But 
that makes Httle difference; the point is that 
we have within us an apprehension of a 
quality which gives us a peculiar kind of 
delight; and even if it does not give us that 
delight when we are dull or anxious or miser- 
able, we still know that the quality is there. 
I remember how when I had a long and 
dreary illness, with much mental depression, 
one of my greatest tortures was to be for 
ever seeing the beauty in things, but not to 
be able to enjoy it. The part of the brain 
that enjoyed was sick and uneasy; but I 
was never in any doubt that beauty was 
there, and had power to please the soul, if 
only the physical machinery were not out of 
gear, so that the pain of transmission over- 
came the sense of delight. 

Poetry is then in its essence the discerning 
of beauty; and that beauty is not only the 
beauty of things heard and seen, but may 
dwell very deep in the mind and soul, and 
be stirred by visions which seem to have no 
connection with outside things at all. 



IV 

POETRY AND LIFE 

Now I will try to say how poetry enters 
into life for most of us; and this is not an 
easy thing to express, because one can look 
only into the treasure of one's own experi- 
ence, wander through the corridors and halls 
of memory, and see the faded tapestries, the 
pictures, and, above all, the portraits which 
hang upon the walls. I suppose that there 
are many people into whose spirits poetry 
only enters in the form of love, when they 
suddenly see a face that they have beheld 
perhaps often before, and have vaguely 
liked, and realise that it has suddenly put 
on some new and delicate charm, some curve 
of cheek or floating tress; or there is some- 
thing in the glance that was surely never 
there before, some consciousness of a secret 

i6 



The Lover 17 

that may be shared, some signal of half- 
alarmed interest, something that shows that 
the two lives, the two hearts, have some 
joyful significance for each other; and then 
there grows up that marvellous mood which 
men call love, which loses itself in hopes of 
meeting, in fears of coldness, in desperate 
desires to please, to impress; and there arise 
too all sorts of tremulous affectations, which 
seem so petty, so absurd, and even so irri- 
tating, to the spectators of the awakening 
passion; desires to punish for the pleasure 
of forgiving, to withdraw for the joy of being 
recalled; a wild elated drama in which the 
whole world recedes into the background, 
and all life is merged for the lover in the 
half-sweet, half-fearful consciousness of one 
other soul, 

Whose lightest whisper moves him more 
Than all the ranged reasons of the world. 

And in this mood it is curious to note how 
inadequate common speech and ordinary 
language appear, to meet the needs of ex- 



1 8 Poetry and Life 

pression. Even young people with no liter- 
ary turn, no gift of style, find their memory 
supplying for them all sorts of broken echoes 
and rhetorical phrases, picked out of half- 
forgotten romances; speech must be soigneux 
now, must be dignified, to meet so uplifting 
an experience. How oddly like a book the 
young lover talks, using so naturally the 
loud inflated phrases that seem so divorced 
from common- sense and experience! How 
common it is to see in law-reports, in cases 
which deal with broken engagements of 
marriage, to find in the excited letters which 
are read and quoted, an irresistible tendency 
to drop into doggerel verse! It all seems 
to the sane reader such a grotesque kind of 
intoxication. Yet it is as natural as the 
airs and graces of the singing canary, the 
unfurling of the peacock's fan, the held 
breath and hampered strut of the turkey — 
a tendency to assume a greatness and a no- 
bility that one does not possess, to seem im- 
pressive, tremendous, desirable. Ordinary 
talk will not do; it must rhyme, it must 



The Joy of Art 19 

march, it must glitter, it must be stuck full 
of gems; accomplishments must be paraded, 
powers must be hinted at. The victor must 
advance to triumph with blown trumpets 
and beaten drums ; and in solitude there must 
follow the reaction of despair, the fear that 
one has disgraced oneself, seemed clumsy 
and dull, done ignobly. Every sensitive 
emotion is awake; and even the most serene 
and modest natures, in the grip of passion, 
can become suspicious and self-absorbed, 
because the passion which consumes them 
is so fierce that it shrivels all social restraints, 
and leaves the soul naked, and bent upon 
the most uncontrolled self -emphasis. 

But apart from this urgent passion, there 
are many quieter ways in which the same 
spirit, the same emotion, which is nothing 
but a sense of self-significance, comes into 
the soul. Some are so inspired by music, 
the combinations of melodies, the intricate 
conspiracy of chords and ordered vibrations, 
when the orchestra is at vork, the great 
droning horns with their hollow reluctant 



20 Poetry and Life 

voices sustaining the shiver and ripple of 
the strings; or by sweeter, simpler cadences 
played at evening, when the garden scents 
wafted out of the fragrant dusk, the shaded 
lamps, the listening figures, all weave them- 
selves together into a mysterious tapestry 
of the sense, till we wonder what strange 
and beautiful scene is being enacted, and 
wherever we turn, catch hints and echoes of 
some bewildering and gracious secret, just 
not revealed! 

Some find it in pictures and statues, the 
mellow liquid pageant of some old master- 
hand, a stretch of windspent moor, with its 
leaning grasses and rifted crags, a dark 
water among glimmering trees at twilight, 
a rich plain running to the foot of haze-hung 
mountains, the sharp-cut billows of a racing 
sea; or a statue with its shapely limbs and 
its veiled smile, or of the suspended strength 
of some struggling Titan: all these hold the 
same inexplicable appeal to the senses, indi- 
cating the efforts of spirits who have seen, 
and loved, and admired, and hoped, and 



The Joy of Art 21 

desired, striving to leave some record of the 
joy that thrilled and haunted, and almost 
tortured them; and to many people the 
emotion comes most directly through the 
words and songs of poetry, that tell of joys 
lived through, and sorrows endured, of hopes 
that could not be satisfied, of desires that 
could not know fulfilment; pictures, painted 
in words, of scenes such as we ourselves have 
moved through in old moods of delight, 
scenes from which the marvellous alchemy 
of memory has abstracted all the base and 
dark elements, leaving only the pure gold 
of remembered happiness — the wide upland 
with the far-off plain, the garden flooded 
with sun, the grasses crisped with frost, the 
snow-laden trees, the flaming autumn woods, 
the sombre forest at shut of day, when the 
dusk creeps stealthily along the glimmering 
aisles, the stream passing clear among large- 
leaved water-plants and spires of bloom; 
and the mood goes deeper still, for it echoes 
the marching music of the heart, its glowing 
hopes, its longing for strength and purity 



22 Poetry and Life 

and peace, its delight in the nearness of 
other hearts, its wisdom, its nobihty. 

But the end and aim of all these various 
influences is the same; their power lies in 
the fact that they quicken in the spirit the 
sense of the energy, the delight, the greatness 
of life, the share that we can claim in them, 
the largeness of our own individual hope 
and destiny; and that is the real work of 
all the thoughts that may be roughly called 
poetical; that they reveal to us something 
permanent and strong and beautiful, some- 
thing which has an irrepressible energy, and 
which outlines itself clearly upon the dark 
background of days, a spirit with which 
we can join hands and hold deep communi- 
cation, which we instinctively feel is the 
greatest reality of the world. In such 
moments we perceive that the times when 
we descend into the meaner and duller and 
drearier businesses of life are interludes in 
our real being, into which we have to descend, 
not because of the actual worth of the baser 
tasks, but that we may practise the courage 



The Quickened Spirit 23 

and the hope we ought to bring away from 
the heavenly vision. The more that men 
have this thirst for beauty, for serene energy, 
for fulness of life, the higher they are in the 
scale, and the less will they quarrel with the 
obscurity and humility of their lives, because 
they are confidently waiting for a purer, 
higher, more untroubled life, to which we 
are all on our way, whether we realise it or no ! 



ART 

It is not uncommon for me to receive letters 
from young aspirants, containing poems, 
and asking me for an opinion on their merits. 
Such a letter generally says that the writer 
feels it hardly worth while to go on writing 
poetry unless he or she is assured that the 
poems are worth something. In such cases 
I reply that the answer lies there! Unless 
it seems worth while, unless indeed poetry 
is the outcome of an irrepressible desire to 
express something, it is certainly not worth 
while writing. On the other hand, if the 
desire is there, it is just as well worth practis- 
ing as any other form of artistic expression. 
A man who liked sketching in water-colours 
would not be restrained from doing so by 
the fear that he might not become an 
24 



The Practice of Poetry 25 

Academician a person who liked picking out 
tunes on a piano need not desist because 
there is no prospect of his earning money by- 
playing in public! 

Poetry is of all forms of literary expression 
the least likely to bring a man credit or cash. 
Most intelligent people with a little gift of 
writing have a fair prospect of getting prose 
articles published. But no one wants third- 
rate poetry; editors fight shy of it, and 
volumes of it are unsaleable. 

I have myself written so much poetry, 
have published so many volumes of verse, 
that I can speak sympathetically on the 
subject. I worked very hard indeed at 
poetry for seven or eight years, wrote little 
else, and the published volumes form only 
a small part of my output, which exists in 
many manuscript volumes. I achieved no 
particular success. My little books were 
fairly well received, and I sold a few hundred 
copies; I have even had a few pieces inserted 
in anthologies. But though I have wholly 
deserted the practice of poetry, and though 



26 Art 

I can by no means claim to be reckoned a 
poet, I do not in the least regret the years I 
gave to it. In the first place it was an in- 
tense pleasure to write. The cadences, the 
metres, the language, the rhymes, all gave 
me a rapturous delight. It trained minute 
observation — my poems were mostly nature- 
poems — and helped me to disentangle the 
salient points and beauties of landscapes, 
hills, trees, flowers, and even insects. Then 
too it is a very real training in the use of 
words; it teaches one what words are musi- 
cal, sonorous, effective; while the necessity of 
having to fit words to metre increases one*s 
stock of words and one's power of applying 
them. When I came back to writing prose, 
I found that I had a far larger and more 
flexible vocabulary than I had previously 
possessed; and though the language of 
poetry is by no means the same as that 
of prose — it is a pity that the two kinds of 
diction are so different in English, because 
it is not always so in other languages — yet 
it made the writing of ornamental and 



The Wonder of Life 27 

elaborate prose an easier matter; it gave 
one too a sense of form; a poem must have 
a certain balance and proportion; so that 
when one who has written verse comes to 
write prose, a subject falls easily into divi- 
sions, and takes upon itself a certain order 
of course and climax. 

But these are only consequences and re- 
sulting advantages. The main reason for 
writing poetry is and must be the delight 
of doing it, the rapture of perceiving a 
beautiful subject, and the pleasure of ex- 
pressing it as finely and delicately as one 
can. I have given it up because, as William 
Morris once said of himself, "to make poetry 
just for the sake of making it is a crime for 
a man of my age and experience!" 

One's feelings lose poetic flow 
Soon after twenty-seven or so ! 

One begins to think of experience in a differ- 
ent sort of way, not as a series of glowing 
points and pictures, which outline them- 
selves radiantly upon a duller background, 



28 Art 

but as a rich full thing, like a great tapestry, 
all of which is important, if it is not all 
beautiful. It is not that the marvel and 
wonder of life is less; but it is more equable, 
more intricate, more mysterious. It does 
not rise at times, like a sea, into great crested 
breakers, but it comes marching in evenly, 
roller after roller, as far as the eye can reach. 
And then too poetry becomes cramped 
and confined for all that one desires to say. 
One lived life, as a young man, rather for 
the sake of the emotions which occasion- 
ally transfigured it, with a priestly sense of 
its occasional splendour; there was not time 
to be leisurely, humorous, gently interested. 
But as we grow older, we perceive that 
poetical emotion is but one of many forces, 
and our sympathy grows and extends itself 
in more directions. One had but little 
patience in the old days for quiet, prosaic, 
unemotional people; but now it becomes 
clear that a great many persons live life on 
very simple and direct lines; one wants to 
understand their point of view better, one 



Poetry and Youth 29 

is conscious of the merits of plainer stuff; 
and so the taste broadens and deepens, and 
becomes like a brimming river rather than 
a leaping crystal fount. Life receives a 
hundred affluents, and is tinged with many 
new substances; and one begins to see that 
if poetry is the finest and sweetest inter- 
pretation of life, it is not always the com- 
pletest or even the largest. 

If we examine the lives of poets, we too 
often see how their inspiration flagged and 
failed. Milton indeed wrote his noblest 
verse in middle-age, after a life immersed in 
affairs. Wordsworth went on writing to 
the end, but all his best poetry was written 
in about five early years. Tennyson went 
on to a patriarchal age, but there is little 
of his later work that bears comparison 
with what he wrote before he was forty. 
Browning produced volume after volume, 
but, with the exception of an occasional 
fine lyric, his later work is hardly more than 
an illustration of his faults of writing. 
Coleridge deserted poetry very early; 



30 Art 

Byron, Shelley, Keats, all died comparatively 
young. 

The Letters of Keats give perhaps a more 
vivid and actual view of the mind and soul 
of a poet than any other existing document. 
One sees there, naively and nobly expressed, 
the very essence of the poetical nature, the 
very soil out of which poetry flowers. It is 
wonderful, because it is so wholly sane, 
simple, and unaffected. It is usual to say 
that the Letters give one a picture of rather 
a second-rate and suburban young man, 
with vulgar friends and hanal associations, 
with one prodigious and matchless faculty. 
But it is that very background that con- 
stitutes the supreme force of the appeal. 
Keats accepted his circumstances, his friends, 
his duties with a singular modesty. He 
was not for ever complaining that he was 
unappreciated and underestimated. His 
commonplaceness, when it appears, is not 
a defect of quality, but an eager human 
interest in the personalities among whom 
his lot was cast. But every now and then 



The Letters of Keats 31 

there swells up a poignant sense of passion 
and beauty, a sacred, haunting, devouring 
fire of inspiration, which leaps high and 
clear upon the homely altar. 

Thus he writes: ''This morning poetry- 
has conquered — I have relapsed into those 
abstractions which are my only life — I feel 
escaped from a new, strange, and threaten- 
ing sorrow .... There is an awful warmth 
about my heart, like a load of immortality. '* 
Or again: "I feel more and more every day, 
as my imagination strengthens, that I do 
not live in this world alone, but in a thousand 
worlds." And again: "I have loved the 
principle of beauty in all things." 

One sees in these passages that there is not 
only a difference of force and passion, but 
an added quality of some kind in the mind of 
a poet, a combination of fine perception and 
emotion, which instantaneously and instinc- 
tively translates itself into words. 

For it must never be forgotten how essen- 
tial a part of the poet is the knack of words. 
I do not doubt that there are hundreds of 



32 Art 

people who are haunted and penetrated 
by a lively sense of beauty, whose emotions 
are fiery and sweet, but who have not just 
the intellectual store of words, which must 
drip like honey from an overflowing jar. It 
is a gift as definite as that of the sculptor 
or the musician, an exuberant fertility and 
swiftness of brain, that does not slowly and 
painfully fit a word into its place, but which 
breathes thought direct into music. 

The most subtle account of this that I 
know is given in a passage in Shelley's 
Defence of Poetry, He says : " A man cannot 
say, 'I will compose poetry' — the greatest 
poet even cannot say it; for the mind in 
creation is like a fading coal, which some 
invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, 
awakes to transitory brightness. The power 
arises from within, like the colour of a 
flower which fades and changes as it is 
developed, and the conscious portions of our 
nature are unprophetic either of its approach 
or its departure. When composition begins, 
inspiration is already on the decline." 



Great Poetry 33 

That I believe is as true as it is beautiful. 
The best poetry is written in a sudden rap- 
ture, and probably needs but little recon- 
sideration or retouching. One knows for 
instance how the Ode to the Nightingale was 
scribbled by Keats on a spring morning, in 
an orchard at Hampstead, and so little 
regarded that it was rescued by a friend 
from the volume into which he had crammed 
the slips of manuscript. Of course poets 
vary greatly in their method; but one may 
be sure of this, that no poem which was not 
a great poem in its first transcript, ever 
becomes a great poem by subsequent hand- 
ling. There are poets indeed like Rossetti 
and FitzGerald who made a worse poem out 
of a better by scrupulous correction; and 
the first drafts of great poems are generally 
the finest poems of all. A poem has some- 
times been improved by excision, notably in 
the case of Tennyson, whose abandoned 
stanzas, printed in his Life^ show how strong 
his instinct was for what was best and purest. 
A great poet, for instance, never, like a lesser 



34 Art 

poet, keeps an unsatisfactory stanza for the 
sake of a good line. Tennyson, in a fine 
homely image, said that a poem must have a 
certain curve of its own, like the curve of 
the rind of a pared apple thrown on the 
floor. It must have a perfect evolution and 
progress, and this can sometimes be best 
arrived at by the omission of stanzas in 
which the inconstant or flagging mind turned 
aside from its design. 

But it is certain that if the poet gets so 
much into the habit of writing poetry, that 
even when he has no sense of inspiration he 
must still write to satisfy a craving, the 
result will be worthless, as it too often was 
in the case of Wordsworth. Because such 
poems become literary instead of poetical; 
and literary poetry has no justification. 

If we take a book like Rossetti's House 
of Life, we shall find that certain sonnets 
stand out with a peculiar freshness and 
brightness, as in the golden sunlight of an 
autumn morning; while many of the sonnets 
give us the sense of slow and gorgeous 



Rossetti 35 

evolution, as if contrived by some poetical 
machine. I was interested to find, in study- 
ing the House of Life carefully, that all the 
finest poems are early work; and when I 
came to look at the manuscripts, I was 
rather horrified to see what an immense 
amount of alternatives had been produced. 
There would be, for instance, no less than 
eight or nine of those great slowly moving 
words, like "incommunicable" or "impor- 
tunate" written down, not so much to express 
an inevitable idea as to fill an inevitable 
space; and thus the poems seem to lose their 
pungency by the slow absorption of pain- 
fully sought agglutinations of syllables, with 
a stately music of their own, of course, but 
garnered rather than engendered. Rossetti's 
great dictum about the prime necessity for 
poetry being "fundamental brain work" led 
him here into error. The brainwork must 
be fundamental and instinctive; it must all 
have been done before the poem is conceived ; 
and very often a poet acquires his power 
through sacrificing elaborate compositions 



36 Art 

which have taught him certainty of touch, 
but are not in themselves great poetry. 
Subsequent brainwork often merely clouds 
the effect, and it was that on which Rossetti 
spent himself in vain. 

The view which Keats took of his own 
Endymion is a far larger and bolder one. 
**I will write independently," he said. "I 
have written independently without judgment. 
I may write independently and with judgment 
hereafter. The genius of poetry must 
work out its own salvation in a man. It 
cannot be matured by law and precept, 
but by sensation and watchfulness in 
itself." 

Of course, fine craftsmanship is an absolute 
necessity; but it is craftsmanship which is 
not only acquired by practice, but which 
is actually there from the first, just as Mozart, 
as a child of eight, could play passages which 
would tax the skill of the most accomplished 
virtuoso. It was not learned by practice, 
that swift correspondence of eye and hand, 
any more than the little swallow learns to fly ; 



The Desire of Expression 37 

it knows it all already, and is merely finding 
out what it knows. 

And therefore there is no doubt that a man 
cannot become a poet by taking thought. 
He can perhaps compose impressive verse, 
but that is all. Poetry is, as Plato says, a 
divine sort of experience, some strange 
blending of inherited characteristics, per- 
haps the fierce emotion of some dumb 
ancestress combining with the verbal skill 
of some unpoetical forefather. The receipt 
is unknown, not necessarily unknowable. 

Of course if one has poetry in one*s soul, 
it is a tremendous temptation to desire its 
expression, because the human race, with 
its poignant desire for transfiguring visions, 
strews the path of the great poet with bays, 
and remembers him as it remembers no 
other himian beings. What would one not 
give to interpret life thus, to flash the loveli- 
ness of perception into desirous minds, to 
set love and hope and yearning to music, 
to inspire anxious hearts with the sense that 
there is something immensely large, tender, 



38 Art 

and significant behind it all! That is what 
we need to be assured of — our own signi- 
ficance, our own share in the inheritance 
of joy; and a poet can teach us to wait, to 
expect, to arise, to adore, when the circum- 
stances of our lives are wrapped in mist and 
soaked with dripping rain. Perhaps that 
is the greatest thing which poetry does for 
us, to reassure us, to enlighten us, to send 
us singing on our way, to bid us trust in God 
even though He is concealed behind calamity 
and disaster, behind grief and heaviness, mis- 
interpreted to us by philosophers and priests, 
and horribly belied by the wrongful dealings 
of men. 



VI 

ART AND MORALITY 

There is a perpetual debate going on — one 
of those moulting shuttlecocks that serve to 
make one's battledore give out a merry 
sound — about the relation of art to morals, 
and whether the artist or the poet ought to 
attempt to teach anything. It makes a good 
kind of debate, because it is conducted in 
large terms, to which the disputants attach 
private meanings. The answer is a very 
simple one. It is that art and morality are 
only beauty realised in different regions; 
and as to whether the artist ought to attempt 
to teach anything, that may be summarily 
answered by the simple dictum that no 
artist ought ever to attempt to teach any- 
thing, with which must be combined the 
fact that no one who is serious about any- 
39 



40 Art and Morality 

thing can possibly help teaching, whether 
he wishes or no! 

High art and high morality are closely 
akin, because they are both but an eager 
following of the law of beauty; but the 
artist follows it in visible and tangible things, 
and the moralist follows it in the conduct and 
relations of life. Artists and moralists must 
be for ever condemned to misunderstand 
each other, because the votary of any art 
cannot help feeling that it is the one thing 
worth doing in the world; and the artist 
whose soul is set upon fine hues and forms 
thinks that conduct must take care of itself, 
and that it is a tiresome business to analyse 
and formulate it; while the moralist who 
loves the beauty of virtue passionately, will 
think of the artist as a child who plays with 
his toys, and lets the real emotions of life go 
streaming past. 

This is a subject upon which it is as well 
to hear the Greeks, because the Greeks were 
of all people who ever lived the most ab- 
sorbingly interested in the problems of 



The Greek View of Art 41 

life, and judged everything by a standard 
of beauty. The Jews, of course, at least 
in their early history, had the same fiery 
interest in questions of conduct; but it 
would be as absurd to deny to Plato an 
interest in morals as to withhold the title 
of artist from Isaiah and the author of the 
Book of Job! 

Plato, as is well known, took a somewhat 
whimsical view of the work of the poet. He 
said that he must exclude the poets from his 
ideal State, because they were the prophets 
of unreality. But he was thinking of a kind 
of man very different from the men whom 
we call poets. He thought of the poet as a 
man who served a patron, and tried to gloze 
over his patron's tyranny and baseness, 
under false terms of glory and majesty; or 
else he thought of dramatists, and con- 
sidered them to be men who for the sake of 
credit and money played skilfully upon the 
sentimental emotions of ordinary people; 
and he fought shy of the writers who used 
tragic passions for the amusement of a 



42 Art and Morality 

theatre. Aristotle disagreed with Plato 
about this, and held that poetry was not 
exactly moral teaching, but that it dis- 
posed the mind to consider moral problems 
as interesting. He said that in looking on at 
a play, a spectator suffered, so to speak, by 
deputy, but all the same learned directly, if 
unconsciously, the beauty of virtue. When 
we come to our own Elizabethans, there is 
no evidence that in their plays and poetry 
they thought about morals at all. No one 
has any idea whether Shakespeare had any 
religion, or what it was; and he above all 
great writers that ever lived seems to have 
taken an absolutely impersonal view of the 
sins and affections of men and women. No 
one is scouted or censured or condemned 
in Shakespeare; one sees and feels the point 
of view of his villains and rogues; one feels 
with them that they somehow could hardly 
have done otherwise than they did; and to 
effect that is perhaps the crown of art. 

But nowadays the poet, with whom one 
may include some few novelists, is really a 



The Artist as Teacher 43 

very independent person. I am not now 
speaking of those who write basely and 
crudely, to please a popular taste. They 
have their reward; and after all they are 
little more than mountebanks, the end of 
whose show is to gather up pence in the 
ring. 

But the poet in verse is listened to by 
few people, unless he is very great indeed; 
and even so his reward is apt to be intangible 
and scanty; while to be deliberately a lesser 
poet is perhaps the most unworldly thing 
that a man can do, because he thus courts de- 
rision; indeed, if there is a bad sign of the 
world's temper just now, it is that men will 
listen to politicians, scientists, men of com- 
merce, and journalists, because these can 
arouse a sensation, or even confer material 
benefits; but men will not listen to poets, 
because they have so little use for the small 
and joyful thoughts that make up some of 
the best pleasures of life. 

It is quite true, as I have said, that no 
artist ought ever deliberately to try to teach 



44 Art and Morality 

people, because that is not his business, and 
one can only be a good artist by minding 
one's business, which is to produce beautiful 
things; and the moment one begins to try 
to produce improving things, one goes off 
the line. But in England there has been of 
late a remarkable fusion of morality and 
art. Ruskin and Browning are clear enough 
proof that it is possible to be passionately 
interested in moral problems in an artistic 
way; while at the same time it is true, as I 
have said, that if any man cares eagerly for 
beauty, and does his best to present it, he 
cannot help teaching all those who are 
searching for beauty, and only require to be 
shown the way. 

The work of all real teachers is to make 
great and arduous things seem simple and 
desirable and beautiful. A teacher is not a 
person who provides short-cuts to know- 
ledge, or who only drills a character out of 
slovenly intellectual faults. The essence of 
all real teaching is a sort of inspiration. 
Take the case of a great teacher, like Arnold 



The Artist as Teacher 45 

or Jowett; Arnold lit in his pupils' minds a 
kind of fire, which was moral rather than 
intellectual; Jowett had a power of putting 
a suggestive brilliancy into dull words and 
stale phrases, showing that they were but 
the crystallised formulas of ideas, which men 
had found wonderful or beautiful. The 
secret of such teaching is quite incommuni- 
cable, but it is a very high sort of art. There 
are many men who feel the inspiration of 
knowledge very deeply, and follow it passion- 
ately, who yet cannot in the least communi- 
cate the glow to others. But just as the 
great artist can paint a homely scene, such 
as we have seen a hundred times, and throw 
into it something mysterious, which reaches 
out hands of desire far beyond the visible 
horizon, so can a great teacher show that 
ideas are living things all bound up with the 
high emotions of men. 

And thus the true poet, whether he writes 
verses or novels, is the greatest of teachers, 
not because he trains and drills the mind, 
but because he makes the thing he speaks of 



46 Art and Morality 

appear so beautiful and desirable that we 
are willing to undergo the training and drill- 
ing that are necessary to be made free of the 
secret. He brings out, as Plato beautifully- 
said, "the beauty which meets the spirit like 
a breeze, and imperceptibly draws the soul, 
even in childhood, into harmony with the 
beauty of reason." The work of the poet 
then is "to elicit the simplest principles of 
life, to clear away complexity, by giving a 
glowing and flashing motive to live nobly and 
generously, to renew the unspoiled growth 
of the world, to reveal the secret hope 
silently hidden in the heart of man." 

Renovahitur ut aquila juventus tua — thy 
youth shall be renewed as an eagle — that 
is what we all desire! Indeed it would 
seem at first sight that, to gain happiness, 
the best way would be, if one could, to 
prolong the untroubled zest of childhood, 
when everything was interesting and ex- 
citing, full of novelty and delight. Some 
few people by their vitality can retain that 
freshness of spirit all their life long. I 



Vitality 47 

remember how a friend of R. L. Stevenson 
told me, that Stevenson, when alone in Lon- 
don, desperately ill, and on the eve of a 
solitary voyage, came to see him ; he himself 
was going to start on a journey the following 
day, and had to visit the lumber-room to get 
out his trunks; Stevenson begged to be 
allowed to accompany him, and, sitting on 
a broken chair, evolved out of the drifted 
accumulations of the place a wonderful 
romance. But that sort of eager freshness 
we most of us find to be impossible as we 
grow older; and we are confronted with the 
problem of how to keep care and dreariness 
away, how to avoid becoming mere trudg- 
ing wayfarers, dully obsessed by all we have 
to do and bear. Can we not find some medi- 
cine to revive the fading emotion, to renew 
the same sort of delight in new thoughts and 
problems which we found in childhood in all 
unfamiliar things, to battle with the dreari- 
ness, the daily use, the staleness of life? 

The answer is that it is possible, but only 
possible if we take the same pains about it 



48 Art and Morality 

that we take to provide ourselves with com- 
forts, to save money, to guard ourselves 
from poverty. Emotional poverty is what 
we most of us have to dread, and we must 
make investments if we wish for revenues. 
We are many of us hampered, as I have 
said, by the dreariness and dulness of the 
education we receive. But even that is no 
excuse for sinking into melancholy bank- 
ruptcy, and going about the world full of 
the earnest capacity for woe, disheartened 
and disheartening. 

A great teacher has the extraordinary 
power, not only of evoking the finest capaci- 
ties from the finest minds, but of actually 
giving to second-rate minds a belief that 
knowledge is interesting and worth atten- 
tion. What we have to do, if we have 
missed coming under the influence of a great 
teacher, is resolutely to put ourselves in 
touch with great minds. We shall not burst 
into flame at once perhaps, and the process 
may seem but the rubbing of one dry stick 
against another; one cannot prescribe a 



The Great Teacher 49 

path, because we must advance upon the 
slender Hne of our own interests; but we 
can surely find some one writer who revives 
us and inspires us; and if we persevere, we 
find the path slowly broadening into a road, 
while the landscape takes shape and design 
around us. The one thing fortunately of 
which there is enough and to spare in the 
world is good advice, and if we find ourselves 
helpless, we can consult some one who 
seems to have a view of finer things, whose 
delight is fresh and eager, whose handling 
of life seems gracious and generous. It is 
as possible to do this, as to consult a doctor 
if we find ourselves out of health; and here 
we stiff and solitary Anglo-Saxons are often 
to blame, because we cannot bring ourselves 
to speak freely of these things, to be impor- 
tunate, to ask for help; it seems to us at 
once impertinent and undignified; but it is 
this sort of dreary consideration, which is 
nothing but distorted vanity, and this still 
drearier dignity, which withholds from us so 
much that is beautiful. 



50 Art and Morality 

The one thing then that I wish to urge is 
that we should take up the pursuit in an 
entirely practical way; as Emerson said, 
with a splendid mixture of common-sense 
and idealism, "hitch our waggon to a star.'* 
It is easy enough to lose ourselves in a vague 
sentimentalism, and to believe that only our 
cramped conditions have hindered us from 
developing into something very wonderful. 
It is easy too to drift into helpless material- 
ism, and to believe that dulness is the natural 
lot of man. But the realm of thought is a 
very free citizenship, and a hundred doors will 
open to us if we only knock at them. More- 
over, that realm is not like an over-populated 
country; it is infinitely large, and virgin 
soil ; and we have only to stake out our claim ; 
and then, if we persevere, we shall find that 
our Joyous Card is really rising into the air 
about us — where else should we build our 
castles? — with all the glory of tower and 
gable, of curtain- wall and battlement, terrace 
and pleasaunce, hall and corridor; our own 
self -built paradise; and then perhaps the 



The Castle 51 

knight, riding lonely from the sunset woods, 
will turn in to keep us company, and the 
wandering minstrel will bring his harp; and 
we may even receive other visitors, like the 
three that stood beside the tent of Abraham 
in the evening, in the plain of Mamre, of 
whom no one asked the name or lineage, 
because the answer was too great for mortal 
ears to hear. 



VII 

INTERPRETATION 

Is the secret of life then a sort of literary 
rapture, a princely thing, only possible 
through costly outlay and jealously selected 
hours, like a concert of stringed instruments, 
whose players are unknown, bursting on the 
ear across the terraces and foliaged walls of 
some enchanted garden? By no means! 
That is the shadow of the artistic nature, 
that the rare occasions of life, where sound 
and scent and weather and sweet companion- 
ship conspire together, are so exquisite, so 
adorable, that the votary of such mystical 
raptures begins to plan and scheme and 
hunger for these occasions, and lives in dis- 
content because they arrive so seldom. 

No art, no Hterature, are worth anything 
at all unless they send one back to life with 
52 



The Mirror 53 

a renewed desire to taste it and to live it. 
Sometimes as I sit on a sunny day writing in 
my chair beside the window, a picture of 
the box-hedge, the tall sycamores, the stone- 
tiled roof of the chapel, with the blue sky 
behind, globes itself in the lens of my 
spectacles, so entrancingly beautiful, that it 
is almost a disappointment to look out on the 
real scene. We like to see things mirrored 
thus and framed, we strangely made 
creatures of life; why, I know not, except 
that our finite little natures love to select 
and isolate experiences from the mass, 
and contemplate them so. But we must 
learn to avoid this, and to realise that if a 
particle of life, thus ordered and restricted, 
is beautiful, the thing itself is more beautiful 
still. But we must not depend helplessly 
upon the interpretations, the skilled reflec- 
tions, of finer minds than our own. If we 
learn from a wise interpreter or poet the 
quality and worth of a fraction of life, it is 
that we may gain from him the power to do 
the same for ourselves elsewhere; we must 



54 Interpretation 

learn to walk alone, not crave, like a helpless 
child, to be for ever led and carried in kindly 
arms. The danger of culture, as it is un- 
pleasantly called, is that we get to love 
things because poets have loved them, and 
as they loved them; and there we must not 
stay; because we thus grow to fear and 
mistrust the strong flavours and sounds of 
life, the joys of toil and adventure, the desire 
of begetting, giving life, drawing a soul from 
the unknown; we come to linger in a half- 
lit place, where things reach us faintly 
mellowed, as in a vision, through enfolding 
trees and at the ends of enchanted glades. 
This book of mine lays no claim to be a 
pageant of all life's joys; it leaves many 
things untouched and untold; but it is a 
plea for this: that those who have to endure 
the common lot of life, who cannot go where 
they would, whose leisure is but a fraction 
of the day, before the morning's toil and 
after the task is done, whose temptation it is 
to put everything else away except food and 
sleep and work and anxiety, not liking life 



The Garden 55 

so but finding it so; — it is a plea that such 
as these should learn how experience, even 
under cramped conditions, may be finely and 
beautifully interpreted, and made rich by 
renewed intention. Because the secret lies 
hid in this, that we must observe life in- 
tently, grapple with it eagerly; and if we 
have a hundred lives before us, we can 
never conquer life till we have learned to 
ride above it, not welter helplessly below it. 
And the cramped and restricted life is all 
the grander for this, that it gives us a nobler 
chance of conquest than the free, liberal, 
wealthy, unrestrained life. 

In the Romaunt of the Rose a little square 
garden is described, with its beds of flowers, 
its orchard- trees. The beauty of the place 
lies partly in its smallness, but more still in 
its running waters, its shadowy wells, where- 
in, as the writer says quaintly enough, are 
^^ no frogs, ^^ and the conduit-pipes that make 
a "noise full-liking." And again in that 
beautiful poem of Tennyson's, one of his 
earliest, with the dew of the morning upon 



56 Interpretation 

it, he describes The Poet's Mind as a 
garden: 

In the middle leaps a fountain 
Like sheet lightning, 
Ever brightening 
With a low melodious thunder ; 
All day and all night it is ever drawn 
From the brain of the purple mountain 
Which stands in the distance yonder: . . . 
And the mountain draws it from Heaven above, 
And it sings a song of undying love. 

That is a power which we all have, in 
some degree, to draw into our souls, or to 
set running through them, the streams of 
Heaven — ^for like water they will run in the 
dullest and darkest place if only they be led 
thither; and the lower the place, the stronger 
the stream! I am careful not to prescribe 
the source too narrowly, for it must be to our 
own liking, and to our own need. And so I 
will not say " Love this and that picture, read 
this and that poet!" because it is just thus, 
by following direction too slavishly, that we 
lose our own particular inspiration. Indeed 



The Epicure of Life 57 

I care very little about fineness of taste, 
fastidious critical rejections, scoffs and sneers 
at particular fashions and details. One 
knows the epicure of life, the man who 
withdraws himself more and more from the 
throng, cannot bear to find himself in dull 
company, reads fewer and fewer books, can 
hardly eat and drink unless all is exactly 
what he approves; till it becomes almost 
wearisome to be with him, because it is such 
anxious and scheming work to lay out every- 
thing to please him, and because he will 
never take his chance of anything, nor bestir 
himself to make anything out of a situation 
which has the least commonness or dulness in 
it. Of course only with the command of 
wealth is such life possible; but the more 
delicate such a man grows, the larger and 
finer his maxims become, and the more he 
casts away from his philosophy the need of 
practising anything. One must think, such 
men say, clearly and finely, one must dis- 
approve freely, one must live only with those 
whom one can admire and love; till they be- 



58 Interpretation 

come at last like one of those sad ascetics, who 
spent their time on the top of pillars, and for 
ever drew up stones from below to make the 
pillar higher yet. 

One is at liberty to mistrust whatever 
makes one isolated and superior; not of 
course that one's life need be spent in a sort 
of diffuse sociability; but one must practise 
an ease that is never embarrassed, a frank- 
ness that is never fastidious, a simplicity 
that is never abashed; and behind it all 
must spring the living waters, with the 
clearness of the sky and the cleanness of 
the hill about them, running still swiftly 
and purely in our narrow garden-ground, 
and meeting the kindred streams that flow 
softly in many other glad and desirous 
hearts. 

In the beautiful old English poem, The 
Pearl, where the dreamer seems to be in- 
structed by his dead daughter Marjory in 
the heavenly wisdom, she tells him that 
'*all the souls of the blest are equal in 
happiness — that they are all kings and 



True Dignity 59 

queens.*'' That is a heavenly kind of king- 
ship, when there are none to be ruled or 
chidden, none to labour and serve; but it 
means the fine frankness and serenity of 
mind which comes of kingship, the perfect 
ease and dignity which springs from not hav- 
ing to think of dignity or pre-eminence at all. 
Long ago I remember how I was sent for 
to talk with Queen Victoria in her age, and 
how much I dreaded being led up to her by 
a majestic lord-in- waiting ; she sate there, 
a little quiet lady, so plainly dressed, so 
simple, with her hands crossed on her lap, 
her sanguine complexion, her silvery hair, 
yet so crowned with dim history and tradi- 
tion, so great as to be beyond all pomp or 
ceremony, yet wearing the awe and majesty 
of race and fame as she wore her plain dress. 
She gave me a little nod and smile, and 
began at once to talk in the sweet clear 
voice that was like the voice of a child. 
Then came my astonishment. She knew, 

* See Professor W. P. Ker's English Literature, Mediceval, 
p. 194. 



6o Interpretation 

it seemed, all about me and my doings, and 
the doings of my relations and friends — not 
as if she had wished to be prepared to sur- 
prise me; but because her motherly heart 
had wanted to know, and had been unable 
to forget. The essence of that charm, which 
flooded all one's mind with love and loyalty, 
was not that she was great, but that she was 
entirely simple and kind; because she loved, 
not her great part in life, but life itself. 

That kingship and queenship is surely 
not out of the reach of any of us; it depends 
upon two things: one, that we keep our 
minds and souls fresh with the love of life, 
which is the very dew of heaven; and the 
other that we claim not rights but duties, 
our share in life, not a control over it; if all 
that we claim is not to rule others, but to be 
interested in them, if we will not be shut out 
from love and care, then the sovereignty is 
in sight, and the nearer it comes the less 
shall we recognise it; for the only dignity 
worth the name is that which we do not 
know to be there. 



VIII 



EDUCATION 



It is clear that the progress of the individual 
and the world alike depends upon the 
quickening of ideas. All civilisation, all law, 
all order, all controlled and purposeful life, 
will be seen to depend on these ideas and 
emotions. The growing conception of the 
right of every individual to live in some 
degree of comfort and security is nothing 
but the taking shape of these ideas and 
emotions; for the end of all civilisation is to 
ensure that there shall be freedom for all 
from debasing and degrading conditions, 
and that is perhaps as far as we have hitherto 
advanced; but the further end in sight is to 
set all men and women free to some extent 
from hopeless drudgery, to give them leisure, 
to provide them with tastes and interests; 

6i 



62 Education 

and further still, to contrive, if possible, that 
human beings shall not be born into the 
world of tainted parentage, and thus to 
stamp out the tyranny of disease and imbe- 
cility and criminal instinct. More and more 
does it become clear that all the off-scourings 
and failures of civilisation are the outcome 
of diseased brains and nerves, and that self- 
control and vigour are the results of nature 
rather than nurture. All this is now steadily 
in sight. The aim is personal freedom, the 
freedom which shall end where another's 
freedom begins; but we recognise now that 
it is no use legislating for social and political 
freedom, if we allow the morally deficient 
to beget offspring for whom moral freedom 
is an impossibility. And perhaps the best 
hope of the race lies in firmly facing this 
problem. 

But, as I say, we have hardly entered upon 
this stage. We have to deal with things as 
they are, with many natures tainted by 
moral feebleness, by obliquity of vision, by 
lack of proportion. The hope at present 



Arousing Interest 63 

lies in the endeavour to find some source of 
inspiration, in a determination not to let 
men and women grow up with fine emotions 
atrophied; and here the whole system of 
education is at fault. It is all on the lines 
of an intellectual gymnastic ; little or nothing 
is done to cultivate imagination, to feed the 
sense of beauty, to arouse interest, to awaken 
the sleeping sense of delight. There is no 
doubt that all these emotions are dormant 
in many people. One has only to reflect on 
the influence of association, to know how 
children who grow up in a home atmosphere 
which is fragrant with beautiful influences, 
generally carry on those tastes and habits 
into later life. But our education tends 
neither to make men and women efficient for 
the simple duties of life, nor to arouse the 
gentler energies of the spirit. "You must 
remember you are translating poetry," said 
a conscientious master to a boy who was 
construing Virgil. "It's not poetry when 
I translate it!" said the boy. I look back 
at my own school-days, and remember the 



64 Education 

bare stately class-rooms, the dry wind of 
intellect, the dull murmur of work, neither 
enjoyed nor understood; and I reflect how 
small a part any fanciful or beautiful or 
leisurely interpretation ever played in our 
mental exercises; the first and last con- 
dition of any fine sort of labour — that it 
should be enjoyed — was put resolutely out 
of sight, not so much as an impossible ad- 
junct, as a thing positively enervating and 
contemptible. Yet if one subtracts the 
idea of enjoyment from labour, there is 
no beauty-loving spirit which does not in- 
stantly and rightly rebel. There must be 
labour, of course, effective, vigorous, brisk 
labour, overcoming difficulties, mastering 
uncongenial details; but the end should 
be enjoyment; and it should be made clear 
that the greater the mastery, the richer the 
enjoyment; and that if one cannot enjoy a 
thing without mastering it, neither can one 
ever really master it without enjoying it. 

What we need,, in education, is some sense 
of far horizons and beautiful prospects, some 



The Wonders of Life 65 

consciousness of the largeness and mystery 
and wonder of life. To take a simple in- 
stance, in my own education. I read the 
great books of Greece and Rome; but I 
knew hardly anything of the atmosphere, 
the social life, the human activity out of 
which they proceeded. One did not think 
of the literature of the Greeks as of a foun- 
tain of eager beauty springing impulsively 
and instinctively out of the most ardent, 
gracious, sensitive life that any nation has 
ever lived. One knew little of the stern, 
businesslike, orderly, grasping Roman tem- 
perament, in which poetry flowered so rarely, 
and the arts not at all, until the national 
fibre began to weaken and grow dissolute. 
One studied history in those days, as if one 
was mastering statute-books, blue-books, 
gazettes, office-files; one never grasped the 
clash of individualities, or the real interests 
and tastes of the nations that fought and 
made laws and treaties. It was all a dealing 
with records and monuments, just the things 
that happened to survive decay — as though 



66 Education 

one's study of primitive man were to begin 
and end with sharpened flints! 

What we have now to do, in this next 
generation, is not to leave education a dry 
conspectus of facts and processes, but to try 
rather that children should learn something 
of the temper and texture of the world at 
certain vivid points of its history ; and above 
all perceive something of the nature of the 
world as it now is, its countries, its nation- 
alities, its hopes, its problems. That is the 
aim, that we should realise what kind of a 
thing life is, how bright and yet how narrow 
a flame, how bounded by darkness and 
mystery, and yet how vivid and active 
within its little space of sun. 



IX 

KNOWLEDGE 

"Knowledge is power," says the old 
adage; and yet so meaningless now, in many 
respects, do the words sound, that it is hard 
even to recapture the mental outlook from 
which it emanated. I imagine that it dates 
from a time when knowledge meant an 
imagined acquaintance with magical secrets, 
short cuts to wealth, health, influence, fame. 
Even now the application of science to the 
practical needs of man has some semblance 
of power about it; the telephone, wireless 
telegraphy, steam engines, anaesthetics — 
these are powerful things. But no man is 
profited by his discoveries; he cannot keep 
them to himself, and use them for his own 
private ends. The most he can do is to make 
a large fortune out of them. And as to other 

67 



68 Knowledge 

kinds of knowledge, erudition, learning, how 
do they profit the possessor? "No one 
knows anything nowadays,** said an eminent 
man to me the other day; "it is not worth 
while! The most learned man is the man 
who knows best where to find things.'* 
There still appears, in works of fiction, 
with pathetic persistence, a belief that learn- 
ing still lingers at Oxford and Cambridge; 
those marvellous Dons, who appear in the 
pages of novels, men who read folios all the 
morning and drink port all the evening, 
where are they in reality? Not at Cam- 
bridge, certainly. I would travel many 
miles, I would travel to Oxford, if I thought 
I could find such an adorable figure. But 
the Don is now a brisk and efficient man of 
business, a paterfamilias with provision to 
make for his family. He has no time for 
folios and no inclination for port. Exami- 
nation papers in the morning, and a glass of 
lemonade at dinner, are the notes of his 
leisure days. The belief in uncommercial 
knowledge has indeed died out of England. 



American Culture 69 

Eton, as Mr. Birrell said, can hardly be 
described as a place of education; and to 
what extent can Oxford and Cambridge be 
described as places of literary research? A 
learned man is apt to be considered a bore, 
and the highest compliment that can be paid 
him is that one would not suspect him of 
being learned. 

There is, indeed, a land in which know- 
ledge is respected, and that is America. If 
we do not take care, the high culture will 
desert our shores, like Astraea's flying hem, 
and take her way Westward, with the course 
of Empire. 

A friend of mine once told me that he 
struggled up a church-tower in Florence, a 
great lean, pale brick minaret, designed, I 
suppose, to be laminated with marble, but 
cheerfully abandoned to bareness; he came 
out on to one of those high balustraded bal- 
conies, which in mediaeval pictures seem to 
have been always crowded with fantastically 
dressed persons, and are now only visited by 
tourists. The silvery city lay outspread 



70 Knowledge 

beneath him, with the rapid mud-stained 
river passing to the plain, the hill-side 
crowded with villas embowered in green 
gardens, and the sad-coloured hills behind. 
While he was gazing, two other tourists, 
young Americans, came quietly out on to 
the balcony, a brother and sister, he thought. 
They looked out for a time in silence, leaning 
on the parapet; and then the brother said 
softly, "How much we should enjoy all this, 
if we were not so ignorant!" Like all 
Americans, they wanted to know! It was 
not enough for them to see the high houses, 
the fantastic towers, the great blind blocks 
of mediaeval palaces, thrust so grimly out 
above the house-tops. It all meant life and 
history, strife and sorrow, it all needed 
interpreting and transfiguring and repeo- 
pling; without that it was dumb and silent, 
vague and bewildering. One does not 
know whether to admire or to sigh! 
Ought one not to be able to take beauty as 
it comes? What if one does not want to 
know these things, as Shelley said to his 



Patriotism 71 

lean and embarrassed tutor at Oxford? If 
knowledge makes the scene glow and live, 
enriches it, illuminates it, it is well. And 
perhaps in England we learn to live so 
incuriously and naturally among historical 
things that we forget the existence of tradi- 
tion, and draw it in with the air we breathe, 
just realising it as a pleasant background 
and not caring to investigate it or master it. 
It is hard to say what we lose by ignorance, it 
is hard to say what we should gain by know- 
ledge. Perhaps to want to know would be 
a sign of intellectual and emotional activity; 
but it could not be done as a matter of duty — 
only as a matter of enthusiasm. 

The poet Clough once said, ''It makes a 
great difference to me that Magna Chart a 
was signed at Runnymede, but it does not 
make much difference to me to know that it 
was signed. " The fact that it was so signed 
affects our liberties, the knowledge only 
affects us, if it inspires us to fresh desire of 
liberty, whatever liberty may be. It is even 
more important to be interested in life than 



^2 Knowledge 

to be interested in past lives. It was Scott, 
I think, who asked indignantly. 

Lives there the man with soul so dead, 
Who never to himself hath said 
This is my own, my native land? 

I do not know how it may be in Scotland! 
Dr. Johnson once said rudely that the finest 
prospect a Scotchman ever saw was the high- 
road that might take him to England; but I 
should think that if Scott's is a fair test of 
deadness of soul, there must be a good many 
people in England who are as dead as door- 
nails! The Englishman is not very imagi- 
native; and a farmer who was accustomed 
to kneel down like Ant sens, and kiss the 
soil of his orchard, would be thought an 
eccentric ! 

Shall we then draw a cynical conclusion 
from all this, and say that knowledge is a 
useless burden; or if we think so, why do 
we think it? I have very little doubt in my 
own mind that why so many young men 
despise and even deride knowledge is be- 



The Handling of Knowledge 73 

cause knowledge has been presented to them 
in so arid a form, so Httle connected with 
anything that concerns them in the remotest 
degree. We ought, I think, to wind our 
way slowly back into the past from the 
present; we ought to start with modern 
problems and modern ideas, and show people 
how they came into being; we ought to learn 
about the world, as it is, first, and climb the 
hill slowly. But what we do is to take the 
history of the past, Athens and Rome and 
Judaga, three glowing and shining realms, I 
readily admit; but we leave the gaps all 
unbridged, so that it seems remote, abstruse, 
and incomprehensible that men should ever 
have lived and thought so. 

Then we deluge children with the old 
languages, not teaching them to read, but to 
construe, and cramming the little memories 
with hideous grammatical forms. So the 
whole process of education becomes a dreary 
wrestling with the uninteresting and the 
unattainable; and when we have broken the 
neck of infantile curiosity with these un- 



74 Knowledge 

couth burdens, we wonder that life becomes 
a place where the only aim is to get a good 
appointment, and play as many games as 
possible. 

Yet learning need not be so cumbrously 
carried after all! I was reading a few days 
ago a little book by Professor Ker, on 
mediaeval English, and reading it with a 
species of rapture. It all came so freshly 
and pungently out of a full mind, penetrated 
with zest and enjoyment. One followed the 
little rill of literary craftsmanship so easily 
out of the plain to its high source among the 
hills, till I wondered why on earth I had not 
been told some of these delightful things 
long ago, that I might have seen how our 
great literature took shape. Such scraps of 
knowledge as I possess fell into shape, and 
I saw the whole as in a map outspread. 

And then I realised that knowledge, if it 
was only rightly directed, could be a beautiful 
and attractive thing, not a mere fuss about 
nothing, dull facts reluctantly acquired, 
readily forgotten. 



Handling of Knowledge 75 

All children begin by wanting to know, 
but they are often told not to be tiresome, 
which generally means that the elder person 
has no answer to give, and does not like to 
appear ignorant. And then the time comes 
for Latin Grammar, and Cicero's De Senectute, 
and Caesar's Commentaries, and the be- 
wildered stripling privately resolves to have 
no more than he can help to do with these 
antique horrors. The marvellous thing 
seems to him to be that men of flesh and 
blood could have found it worth their while 
to compose such things. 

Erudition, great is thy sin ! It is not that 
one wants to deprive the savant of his know- 
ledge; one only wants a little common-sense 
and imaginative sympathy. How can a 
little boy guess that some of the most beauti- 
ful stories in the world lie hid among a mass 
of wriggling consonants, or what a garden 
lurks behind the iron gate, with pXaoauoo 
and juoXov/^ai to guard the threshold? 

I am not going to discuss here the old 
curriculum. "Let 'em 'ave it!" as the 



76 Knowledge 

parent said to the schoolmaster, under the 
impression that it was some instrument of 
flagellation — as indeed it is. I look round 
my book-lined shelves, and reflect how much 
of interest and pleasure those parallel rows 
have meant to me, and how I struggled into 
the use of them outside of and not because 
of my so-called education; and how much 
they might mean to others if they had not 
been so conscientiously bumped into paths 
of peace. 

"Nothing," said Pater, speaking of art in 
one of his finest passages, "nothing which 
has ever engaged the great and eager affec- 
tions of men and women can ever wholly lose 
its charm.'* Not to the initiated, perhaps! 
But I sometimes wonder if anything which 
has been taught with dictionary and gram- 
mar, with parsing and construing, with 
detention and imposition, can ever wholly 
regain its charm. I am afraid that we must 
make a clean sweep of the old processes, if 
we have any intention of interesting our 
youth in the beauty of human ideas and 



The Grammar-Grind 77 

their expression. But while we do not care 
about beauty and interest in life, while we 
conscientiously believe, in spite of a cataract 
of helpless facts, in the virtues of the old 
grammar-grind, so long shall we remain an 
uncivilised nation. Civilisation does not 
consist in commercial prosperity, or even in 
a fine service of express trains. It resides 
in quick apprehension, lively interest, eager 
sympathy ... at least I suspect so. 

''Like a crane or a swallow, so did I 
chatter!** said the rueful prophet. I do not 
write as a pessimist, hardly as a critic; still 
less as a censor; to waste time in deriding 
others' theories of life is a very poor sub- 
stitute for enjoying it! I think we do very 
fairly well as we are; only do not let us in- 
dulge in the cant in which educators so freely 
indulge, the claim that we are interested in 
ideas intellectual or artistic, and that we are 
trying to educate our youth in these things. 
We do produce some intellectual athletes, 
and we knock a few hardy minds more or less 
into shape; but meanwhile a great river of 



78 Knowledge 

opportunities, curiosity, intelligence, taste, 
interest, pleasure, goes idly weltering, 
through mud-flats and lean promontories 
and bare islands to the sea. It is the loss, 
the waste, the folly, of it that I deplore. 



GROWTH 

As the years go on, what one begins to per- 
ceive about so many people — though one 
tries hard to beUeve it is not so — is that 
somehow or other the mind does not grow, 
the view does not alter; life ceases to be a 
pilgrimage, and becomes a journey, such 
as a horse takes in a farm-cart. He is 
pulling something, he has got to pull it, he 
does not care much what it is — turnips, hay, 
manure! If he thinks at all, he thinks of the 
stable and the manger. The middle-aged 
do not try experiments, they lose all sense of 
adventure. They make the usual kind of 
fortification for themselves, pile up a shelter 
out of prejudices and stony opinions. It 
is out of the wind and rain, and the pro- 
spect is safely excluded. The landscape 
79 



8o Growth 

is so familiar that the entrenched spirit does 
not even think about it, or care what Hes 
behind the hill or across the river. 

Now of course I do not mean that people 
can or should play fast and loose with life, 
throw up a task or a position the moment 
they are bored with it, be at the mercy of 
moods. I am speaking here solely of the 
possible adventures of mind and soul; it is 
good, wholesome, invigorating, to be tied to 
a work in life, to have to discharge it whether 
one likes it or no, through indolence and 
disinclination, through depression and rest- 
lessness. But we ought not to be immured 
among conventions and received opinions. 
We ought to ask ourselves why we believe 
what we take for granted, and even if we 
do really believe it at all. We ought not 
to condemn people who do not move along 
the same lines of thought; we ought to 
change our minds a good deal, not out of 
mere levity, but because of experience. We 
ought not to think too much of the import- 
ance of what we are doing, and still less of 



Self-Applause 8i 

the importance of what we have done; we 
ought to find a common ground on which to 
meet distasteful people; we ought to labour 
hard against self-pity as well as against 
self-applause; we ought to feel that if we 
have missed chances, it is out of our own 
heedlessness and stupidity. Self-applause 
is a more subtle thing even than self-pity, 
because, if one rejects the sense of credit, 
one is apt to congratulate oneself on being 
the kind of person who does reject it, where- 
as we ought to avoid it as instinctively as 
we avoid a bad smell. Above all, we ought 
to believe that we can do something to 
change ourselves, if we only try; that we 
can anchor our conscience to a responsibility 
or a personality, can perceive that the 
society of certain people, the reading of 
certain books, does affect us, make our 
mind grow and germinate, give us a sense 
of something fine and significant in life. 
The thing is to say, as the prim governess 
says in Shirley, "You acknowledge the in- 
estimable worth of principle?" — it is possible 



82 Growth 

to get and to hold a clear view, as opposed to 
a muddled view, of life and its issues; and 
the blessing is that one can do this in any 
circle, under any circumstances, in the midst 
of any kind of work. That is the wonderful 
thing about thought, that it is like a captive 
balloon which is anchored in one*s garden. 
It is possible to climb into it and to cast 
adrift ; but so many people, as I have said, 
seem to end by pulling the balloon in, letting 
out the gas, and packing the whole away in a 
shed. Of course the power of doing all this 
varies very much in different temperaments; 
but I am sure that there are many people who, 
looking back at their youth, are conscious 
that they had something stirring and throb- 
bing within them which they have somehow 
lost; some vision, some hope, some faint 
and radiant ideal. Why do they lose it, why 
do they settle down on the lees of life, why 
do they snuggle down among comfortable 
opinions? Mostly, I am sure, out of a kind 
of indolence. There are a good many people 
who say to themselves, "After all, what 



The Design 83 

really matters is a solid defined position 
in the world; I must make that for myself, 
and meanwhile I must not indulge myself 
in any fancies; it will be time to do that 
when I have earned my pension and settled 
my children in life." And then when the 
time arrives, the frail and unsubstantial 
things are all dead and cannot be recovered; 
for happiness cannot be achieved along these 
cautious and heavy lines. 

And so I say that we must deliberately 
aim at something different from the first. 
We must not block up the further views and 
wider prospects; we must keep the horizon 
open. What I here suggest has nothing 
whatever that is unpractical about it; it is 
only a deeper foresight, a more prudent 
wisdom. We must say to ourselves that 
whatever happens, the soul shall not be 
atrophied; and we should be as anxious 
about it, if we find that it is losing its zest 
and freedom, as we should be if we found 
that the body were losing its appetite! 

It is no metaphor then, but sober earnest, 



84 Growth 

when I say that when we take our place in 
the working world, we ought to lay the 
foundations of that other larger stronghold 
of the soul, Joyous Card. All that matters 
is that we should choose a fair site for it in 
free air and beside still waters; and that we 
should plan it for ourselves, set out gardens 
and plantations, with as large a scheme as 
we can make for it, expecting the grace and 
greenery that shall be, and the increase which 
God gives. It may be that we shall have to 
build it slowly, and we may have to change 
the design many times ; but it will be all built 
out of our own mind and hope, as the nautilus 
evolves its shell. 

I am not speaking of a scheme of self- 
improvement, of culture followed that it 
may react on our profession or bring us in 
touch with useful people, of mental dis- 
cipline, of correct information. The Card 
is not to be a factory or an hotel ; it must be 
frankly built /or our delight. It is delight that 
we must follow, everything that brims the 
channel of life, stimulates, freshens, enlivens, 



Fulness of Life 85 

tantalises, attracts. It must at all costs be 
beautiful. It must embrace that part of 
religion that glows for us, the thing which 
we find beautiful in other souls, the art, the 
poetry, the tradition, the love of nature, the 
craft, the interests we hanker after. It need 
not contain all these things, because we can 
often do better by checking diffuseness, and 
by resolute self -limitation. It is not by be- 
lieving in particular books, pictures, tunes, 
tastes, that we can do it. That ends often 
as a mere prison to the thought; it is rather 
by meeting the larger spirit that lies behind 
life, recognising the impulse which meets 
us in a thousand forms, which forces us not 
to be content with narrow and petty things, 
but emerges as the energy, whatever it is, 
that pushes through the crust of life, as 
the flower pushes through the mould. Our 
dulness, our acquiescence in monotonous 
ways, arise from our not realising how in- 
finitely important that force is, how much 
it has done for man, how barren life is with- 
out it. Here in England many of us have a 



86 Growth 

dark suspicion of all that is joyful, inherited 
perhaps from our Puritan ancestry, a fear of 
yielding ourselves to its influence, a terror 
of being grimly repaid for indulgence, an old 
superstitious dread of somehow incurring 
the wrath of God, if we aim at happiness 
at all. We must know, many of us, that 
strange shadow which falls upon us when we 
say, "I feel so happy to-day that some evil 
must be going to befall me!" It is true 
that afflictions must come, but they are 
not to spoil our joy; they are rather to 
refine it and strengthen it. And those 
who have yielded themselves to joy are 
often best equipped to get the best out of 
sorrow. 

We must aim then at fulness of life; not 
at husbanding our resources with meagre 
economy, but at spending generously and 
fearlessly, grasping experience firmly, nur- 
turing zest and hope. The frame of mind 
we must beware of, which is but a stingy 
vanity, is that which makes us say, "I am 
sure I should not like that person, that book. 



Fulness of Life 87 

that place!" It is that closing-in of our own 
possibilities that we must avoid. 

There is a verse in the Book of Proverbs 
that often comes into my mind; it is spoken 
of a reprobate, whose delights indeed are 
not those that the soul should pursue; but 
the temper in which he is made to cling to 
the pleasure which he mistakes for joy, 
is the temper, I am sure, in which one should 
approach life. He cries, " They have stricken 
me, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, 
and I felt it not. When shall I awake ? I will 
seek it yet again,'' 



XI 

EMOTION 

We are a curious nation, we English ! Stend- 
hal says that our two most patent vices 
are bashfulness and cant. That is to say, 
we are afraid to say what we think, and 
when we have gained the courage to speak, 
we say more than we think. We are really 
an emotional nation at heart, easily moved 
and liking to be moved; we are largely swayed 
by feeling, and much stirred by anything 
that is picturesque. But we are strangely 
ashamed of anything that seems like senti- 
ment; and so far from being bluff and 
unaffected about it, we are full of the affecta- 
tion, the pretence of not being swayed by our 
emotions. We have developed a curious 
idea of what men and women ought to be; 
and one of our pretences is that men should 
88 



Property 89 

affect not to understand sentiment, and to 
leave, as we rudely say, "all that sort of 
thing to the women." Yet we are much at 
the mercy of claptrap and mawkish phrases, 
and we like rhetoric partly because we are 
too shy to practise it. The result of it is 
that we believe ourselves to be a frank, out- 
spoken, good-natured race; but we produce 
an unpleasant effect of stiffness, angularity, 
discourtesy, and self-centredness upon more 
genial nations. We defend our bluff ness by 
believing that we hold emotion to be too 
rare and sacred a quality to be talked about, 
though I always have a suspicion that if a 
man says that a subject is too sacred to dis- 
cuss, he probably also finds it too sacred to 
think about very much either; yet if one can 
get a sensible Englishman to talk frankly 
and unaffectedly about his feelings, it is 
often surprising to find how delicate they 
are. 

One of our chief faults is our love of pro- 
perty, and the consequence of that is our 
admiration for what we call ''business-like" 



90 Emotion 

qualities. It is really from the struggle 
between the instinct of possession and the 
emotional instinct that our bashf ulness arises ; 
we are afraid of giving ourselves away, and 
of being taken advantage of; we value posi- 
tion and status and respectability very 
high; we like to know who a man is, what he 
stands for, what his influence amounts to, 
what he is worth; and all this is very in- 
jurious to our simplicity, because we esti- 
mate people so much not by their real merits 
but by their accumulated influence. I do 
not believe that we shall ever rise to true 
greatness as a nation until we learn not to 
take property so seriously. It is true that 
we prosper in the world at present, we keep 
order, we make money, we spread a bour- 
geois sort of civilisation, but it is not a parti- 
cularly fine or fruitful civilisation, because 
it deals so exclusively with material things. 
I do not wish to decry the race, because it 
has force, toughness, and fine working 
qualities; but we do not know what to do 
with our prosperity when we have got it ; we 



The Elizabethan Era 91 

can make very little use of leisure; and our 
idea of success is to have a well-appointed 
house, expensive amusements, and to dis- 
tribute a dull and costly hospitality, which 
ministers more to our own satisfaction than 
to the pleasure of the recipients. 

There really can be few countries where 
men are so contented to be dull! There is 
little speculation or animation or intelligence 
or interest among us, and people who desire 
such an atmosphere are held to be fanciful, 
eccentric, and artistic. It was not always so 
with our race. In Elizabethan times we had 
all the inventiveness, the love of adventure, 
the pride of dominance that we have now; 
but there was then a great interest in things 
of the mind as well, a lively taste for ideas, 
a love of beautiful things and thoughts. 
The Puritan uprising knocked all that on 
the head, but Puritanism was at least pre- 
occupied with moral ideas, and developed 
an excitement about sin which was at all 
events a sign of intellectual ferment. And 
then we did indeed decline into a comfort- 



92 Emotion 

able sort of security, into a stale classical 
tradition, with pompous and sonorous writ- 
ing on the one hand, and with neatness, 
literary finish, and wit rather than humour 
on the other. That was a dull, stolid, digni- 
fied time; and it was focussed into a great 
figure of high genius, filled with the com- 
bative common-sense which Englishmen 
admire, the figure of Dr. Johnson. His in- 
fluence, his temperament, portrayed in his 
matchless biography, did indeed dominate 
literary England to its hurt; because the 
essence of Johnson was his freshness, and in 
his hands the great rolling Palladian sen- 
tences contrived to bite and penetrate; but 
his imitators did not see that freshness was 
the one requisite ; and so for a generation the 
pompous rotund tradition flooded English 
prose; but for all that, England was saved in 
literature from mere stateliness by the sudden 
fierce interest in life and its problems which 
burst out like a spring in eighteenth-century 
fiction; and so we come to the Victorian 
era, when we were partially submerged by 



The Victorian Era 93 

prosperity, scientific invention, commerce, 
colonisation. But the great figures of the 
century arose and had their say — Carlyle, 
Tennyson, Browning, Ruskin, William 
Morris; it was there all the time, that spirit 
of fierce hope and discontent and emotion, 
that deep longing to penetrate the issues 
and the significance of life. 

It may be that the immense activity of 
science somewhat damped our interest in 
beauty; but that is probably a temporary 
thing. The influence exerted by the early 
scientists was in the direction of facile 
promises to solve all mysteries, to analyse 
everything into elements, to classify, to 
track out natural laws; and it was believed 
that the methods and processes of life would 
be divested of their secrecy and their irrespon- 
sibility; but the effect of further investi- 
gation is to reveal that life is infinitely more 
complex than was supposed, and that the 
end is as dim as ever; though science did 
for a while make havoc of the stereotyped 
imaginative systems of faith and belief, so 



94 Emotion 

that men supposed that beauty was but 
an accidental emphasis of law, and that the 
love of it could be traced to very material 
preferences. 

The artist was for a time dismayed, at 
being confronted by the chemist who held 
that he had explained emotion because he 
had analysed the substance of tears; and 
for a time the scientific spirit drove the 
spirit of art into cliques and coteries, so 
that artists were hidden, like the Lord's 
prophets, by fifties in caves, and fed upon 
bread and water. 

What mostly I would believe now injures 
and overshadows art, is that artists are 
affected by the false standard of prosperous 
life, are not content to work in poverty and 
simplicity, but are anxious, as all ambitious 
natures who love applause must be, to share 
in the spoils of the Philistines. There are, 
I know, craftsmen who care nothing at all for 
these things, but work in silence and even in 
obscurity at what seems to them engrossing 
and beautiful; but they are rare; and when 



The Greek Spirit 95 

there is so much experience and pleasure and 
comfort abroad, and when security and 
deference so much depend upon wealth, the 
artist desires wealth, more for the sake of 
experience and pleasure than for the sake 
of accumulation. 

But the spirit which one desires to see 
spring up is the Athenian spirit, which finds 
its satisfaction in ideas and thoughts and 
beautiful emotions, in mental exploration 
and artistic expression; and is so absorbed, 
so intent upon these things that it can afford 
to let prosperity flow past like a muddy 
stream. Unfortunately, however, the Eng- 
lish spirit is solitary rather than social, 
and the artistic spirit is jealous rather than 
inclusive; and so it comes about that in- 
stead of artists and men of ideas consort- 
ing together and living a free and simple 
life, they tend to dwell in lonely fortresses 
and paradises, costly to create, costly to 
maintain. The English spirit is against 
communities. If it were not so, how easy 
it would be for people to live in groups and 



96 Emotion 

circles, with common interests and tastes, to 
encourage each other to beHeve in beautiful 
things, and to practise ardent thoughts and 
generous dreams. But this cannot be done 
artificially, and the only people who ever try 
to do it are artists, who do occasionally 
congregate in a place, and make no secret to 
each other of what they are pursuing. I have 
sometimes touched the fringe of a community 
like that, and have been charmed by the 
sense of a more eager happiness, a more un- 
affected intercourse of spirits than I have 
found elsewhere. But the world intervenes! 
domestic ties, pecuniary interests, civic 
claims disintegrate the group. It is sad to 
think how possible such intercourse is in 
youth, and in youth only, as one sees it dis- 
played in that fine and moving book Trilby, 
which does contrive to reflect the joy of 
the buoyant companionship of art. But 
the flush dies down, the insouciance departs, 
and with it the ardent generosity of life. 
Some day perhaps, when life has become 
simpler and wealth more equalised, when 



The Charm of Life 97 

work is more distributed, when there is less 
production of unnecessary things, these 
groups will form themselves, and the frank, 
eager, vivid spirit of youth will last on into 
middle-age, and even into age itself. I do 
not think that this is wholly a dream; but 
we must first get rid of much of the pompous 
nonsense about money and position, which 
now spoils so many lives; and if we could be 
more genuinely interested in the beauty and 
complex charm and joy of life, we should 
think less and less of material things, be 
content with shelter, warmth, and food, and 
grudge the time we waste in providing things 
for which we have no real use, simply in 
order that, like the rich fool, we may con- 
gratulate ourselves on having much goods 
laid up for many years, when the end was 
hard at hand! 



XII 

MEMORY 

Memory is for many people the only form of 
poetry which they indulge. If a soul turns 
to the future for consolation in a sad or 
wearied or disappointed present, it is in 
religion that hope and strength are some- 
times found; but if it is a retrospective 
nature — and the poetical nature is generally 
retrospective, because poetry is concerned 
with the beauty of actual experience and 
actual things, rather than with the possible 
and the unknown — then it finds its medicine 
for the dreariness of life in memory. Of 
course there are many simple and healthy 
natures which do not concern themselves 
with visions at all — the little businesses, the 
daily pleasures, are quietly and even eagerly 
enjoyed. But the poetical nature is the 
98 



Experience 99 

nature that is not easily contented, because 
it tends to idealisation, to the thought that 
the present might easily be so much happier, 
brighter, more beautiful, than it is. 

An eager soul that looks beyond 
And shivers in the midst of bliss, 
That cries, "I should not need despond, 
If this were otherwise, and this!" 

And so the soul that has seen much and 
enjoyed much and endured much, and whose 
whole life has been not spoiled, of course, 
but a little shadowed by the thought that 
the elements of happiness have never been 
quite as pure as it would have wished, turns 
back in thought to the old scenes of love 
and companionship, and evokes from the 
dark, as from the pages of some volume of 
photographs and records, the pictures of the 
past, retouching them, it is true, and adapt- 
ing them, by deftly removing all the broken 
lights and intrusive anxieties, not into what 
they actually were, but into what they 
might have been. Carlyle laid his finger 



loo Memory 

upon the truth of this power, when he said 
that the reason why the pictures of the past 
were always so golden in tone, so delicate 
in outline, was because the quality of fear 
was taken from them. It is the fear of what 
may be and what must be that overshadows 
present happiness; and if fear is taken from 
us we are happy. The strange thing is that 
we cannot learn not to be afraid, even 
though all the darkest and saddest of our 
experiences have left us unscathed; and if 
we could but find a reason for the mingling 
of fear with our lives, we should have gone 
far towards solving the riddle of the world. 

This indulgence of memory is not neces- 
sarily a weakening or an enervating thing, 
so long as it does not come to us too early, 
or disengage us from needful activities. It 
is often not accompanied by any shadow of 
loss or bitterness. I remember once sitting 
with my beloved old nurse, when she was 
near her ninetieth year, in her little room, 
in which was gathered much of the old 
nursery furniture, the tiny chairs of the 



Old Age loi 

children, the store-cupboard with the farm- 
yard pictures on the panel, the stuffed pet- 
birds — all the homely wrack of life; and we 
had been recalling many of the old childish 
incidents with laughter and smiles. When 
I rose to go, she sate still for a minute, and 
her eyes filled with quiet tears, "Ah, those 
were happy days!" she said. But there was 
no repining about it, no sense that it was 
better to forget old joys — rather a quiet 
pleasure that so much that was beautiful 
and tender was laid away in memory, and 
could neither be altered nor taken away. 
And one does not find in old people, whose 
memory of the past is clear, while their 
recollection of the present grows dim, any 
sense of pathos, but rather of pride and 
eagerness about recalling the minutest de- 
tails of the vanished days. To feel the 
pathos of the past, as Tennyson expressed 
it in that wonderful and moving lyric, 
Tears, idle tears, is much more characteristic 
of youth. There is rather in serene old age 
a sense of pleasant triumph at having safely 



102 Memory 

weathered the storms of fate, and left the 
tragedies of life behind. The aged would 
not as a rule live life over again, if they 
could. They are not disappointed in life. 
They have had, on the whole, what they 
hoped and desired. As Goethe said, in that 
deep and large maxim, "Of that which a 
man desires in his youth, he shall have 
enough in his age." That is one of the 
most singular things in life — at least this is 
my experience — how the things which one 
really desired, not the things which one 
ought to have desired, are showered upon 
one. I have been amazed and even stupefied 
sometimes to consider how my own little 
petty, foolish, whimsical desires have been 
faithfully and literally granted me. We 
most of us do really translate into fact what 
we desire, and as a rule we only fail to get the 
things which we have not desired enough. 
It is true indeed that we often find that 
what we desired was not worth getting; 
and we ought to be more afraid of our desires, 
not because we shall not get them, but be- 



The Indulgent Hand 103 

cause we shall almost certainly have them 
fulfilled. For myself I can only think with 
shame how closely my present conditions do 
resemble my young desires, in all their petty 
range, their trivial particularity. I suppose I 
have unconsciously pursued them, chosen 
them, grasped at them ; and the shame of it is 
that if I had desired better things, I should 
assuredly have been given them. I see, or 
seem to see, the same thing in the lives of 
many that I know. What a man sows he 
shall reap ! That is taken generally to mean 
that if he sows pleasure, he shall reap dis- 
aster; but it has a much truer and more 
terrible meaning than that — namely, that if 
a man sows the seed of small, trivial, foolish 
joys, the grain that he reaps is small, trivial, 
and foolish too. God is indeed in many ways 
an indulgent Father, like the Father in the 
parable of the Prodigal Son; and the best 
rebuke that He gives, if we have the wisdom 
to see it, is that He so often does hand us, 
with a smile, the very thing we have desired. 
And thus it is well to pray that He should 



104 Memory 

put into our minds good desires, and that we 
should use our wills to keep ourselves from 
dwelling too much upon small and pitiful 
desires, for the fear is that they will be 
abundantly gratified. 

And thus when the time comes for recol- 
lection, it is a very wonderful thing to look 
back over life, and see how eagerly gracious 
God has been to us. He knows very well 
that we cannot learn the paltry value of the 
things we desire, if they are withheld from 
us, but only if they are granted to us; and 
thus we have no reason to doubt His fatherly 
intention, because He does so much dispose 
life to please us. And we need not take it 
for granted that He will lead us by harsh 
and provocative discipline, though, when He 
grants our desire. He sometimes sends lean- 
ness withal into our soul. Yet one of the 
things that strikes one most forcibly, as one 
grows older and learns something of the 
secrets of other lives, is how lightly and 
serenely men and women do often bear what 
might seem to be intolerable calamities. 



The Game of Life 105 

How universal an experience it is to find 
that when the expected calamity does come, 
it is an easier affair than we thought it, so 
that we say under the blow, *'Is that really 
all?" In that wonderful book, the Diary of 
Sir Walter Scott, when his bankruptcy fell 
upon him, and all the schemes and designs 
that he had been carrying out, with the 
joyful zest of a child — his toy-castle, his 
feudal circle, his wide estate — were suddenly 
suspended, he wrote with an almost amused 
surprise that he found how little he really 
cared, and that the people who spoke tenderly 
and sympathetically to him, as though he 
must be reeling under the catastrophe, 
would themselves be amazed to find that 
he found himself as cheerful and undaunted 
as ever. Life is apt, for all vivid people, 
to be a species of high-hearted game: it is 
such fun to play it as eagerly as one can, and 
to persuade oneself that one really cares 
about the applause, the money, the fine 
house, the comforts, the deference, the con- 
venience of it all. And yet, if there is any- 



io6 Memory 

thing noble in a man or woman, when the 
game is suddenly interrupted and the toys 
swept aside, they find that there is some- 
thing exciting and stimulating in having to 
do without, in adapting themselves with 
zest to the new conditions. It was a good 
game enough, but the new game is better! 
The failure is to take it all heavily and 
seriously, to be solemn about it; for then 
failure is disconcerting indeed. But if one 
is interested in experience, but yet has the 
vitality to see how detached one really is 
from material things, how little they really 
affect us, then the change is almost grateful. 
It is the spirit of the game, the activity, the 
energy, that delights us, not the particular 
toy. And so the looking back on life ought 
never to be a mournful thing; it ought to be 
light-hearted, high-spirited, amusing. The 
spirit survives, and there is yet much experi- 
ence ahead of us. We waste our sense of 
pathos very strangely over inanimate things. 
We get to feel about the things that surround 
us, our houses, our very chairs and tables. 



False Pathos 107 

as if they were somehow things that were 
actually attached to us. We feel, when the 
old house that has belonged to our family 
passes into other hands, as though the rooms 
resented the intruders; as though our sofas 
and cabinets could not be at ease in other 
hands, as if they would almost prefer shabby 
and dusty inaction in our own lumber-room, 
to cheerful use in some other circle. This 
is a delusion of which we must make haste 
to get rid. It is the weakest sort of senti- 
ment, and yet it is treasured by many 
natures as if it were something refined and 
noble. To yield to it, is to fetter our 
life with self-imposed and fantastic chains. 
There is no sort of reason why we should 
not love to live among familiar things; but 
to break our hearts over the loss of them is 
a real debasing of ourselves. We must learn 
to use the things of life very lightly and de- 
tachedly ; and to entrench ourselves in trivial 
associations is simply to court dreariness and 
to fall into a stupor of the spirit. 

And thus even our old memories must be 



io8 Memory 

treated with the same lightness and un- 
affectedness. We must do all we can to 
forget grief and disaster. We must not 
consecrate a shrine to sorrow and make the 
votive altar, as Dido did, into a causa doloris, 
an excuse for lamentation. We must not 
think it an honourable and chivalrous and 
noble thing to spend our time in broken- 
hearted solemnity in the vaults of perished 
joys. Or if we do it, we must frankly con- 
fess it to be a weakness and a languor of 
spirit, not believe it to be a thing which 
others ought to admire and respect. It was 
one of the base sentimentalities of the last 
century, a real sign of the decadence of life, 
that people felt it to be a fine thing to 
cherish grief, and to live resolutely with 
sighs and tears. The helpless widow of 
nineteenth-century fiction, shrouded in crape, 
and bursting into tears at the smallest sign 
of gaiety, was a wholly unlovely, affected, 
dramatic affair. And one of the surest signs 
of our present vitality is that this attitude 
has become not only unusual, but frankly 



Indulgence of Grief 109 

absurd and unfashionable. There is an 
intense and gallant pathos about a nature 
broken by sorrow, making desperate attempts 
to be cheerful and active, and not to cast a 
shadow of grief upon others. There is no 
pathos at all in the sight of a person bent 
on emphasising his or her grief, on using it 
to make others uncomfortable, on extracting 
a recognition of its loyalty and fidelity and 
emotional fervour. 

Of course there are some memories and 
experiences that must grave a deep and 
terrible mark upon the heart, the shock of 
which has been so severe, that the current 
of life must necessarily be altered by them. 
But even then it is better as far as possible 
to forget them and to put them away from 
us — at all events, not to indulge them or 
dwell in them. To yield is simply to delay 
the pilgrimage, to fall exhausted in some 
unhappy arbour by the road. The road has 
to be travelled, every inch of it, and it is 
better to struggle on in feebleness than to 
collapse in despair. 



no Memory 

Mrs. Charles Kingsley, in her widowhood, 
once said to a friend, "Whenever I find 
myself thinking too much about Charles, I 
simply force myself to read the most ex- 
citing novel I can. He is there, he is waiting 
for me; and hearts were made to love with, 
not to break." 

And as the years go on, even the most 
terrible memories grow to have the grace 
and beauty which nature lavishes on all the 
relics of extinct forces and spent agonies. 
They become like the old grey broken castle, 
with the grasses on its ledges, and the crows 
nesting in its parapets, rising blind and 
dumb on its green mound, with the hamlet 
at its feet; or like the craggy islet, severed 
by the raging sea from the towering head- 
land, where the samphire sprouts in the rift 
and the sea-birds roost, at whose foot the 
surges lap, and over whose head the land- 
ward wind blows swiftly all the day. 



XIII 

RETROSPECT 

But one must not forget that after all 
memory has another side, too often a rueful 
side, and that it often seems to turn sour 
and poisonous in the sharp decline of fading 
life; and this ought not to be. I would 
like to describe a little experience of my own 
which came to me as a surprise, but showed 
me clearly enough what memory can be and 
what it rightly is, if it is to feed the spirit 
at all. 

Not very long ago I visited Lincoln, 
where my father was Canon and Chancellor 
from 1872 to 1877. I had been there only 
once since then, and that was twenty-four 
years ago. When we lived there I was a 
small Eton boy, so that it was always holiday 
time there, and a place which recalls nothing 
III 



112 Retrospect 

but school holidays has perhaps an unfair 
advantage. Moreover, it was a period quite 
unaccompanied, in our family life, by any 
sort of trouble, illness, or calamity. The 
Chancery of Lincoln is connected in my 
mind with no tragic or even sorrowful event 
whatever, and suggests no painful reminis- 
cence. How many people, I wonder, can 
say that of any home that has sheltered 
them for so long? 

Of course Lincoln itself, quite apart from 
any memories or associations, is a place to 
kindle much emotion. It was a fine sunny 
day there, and the colour of the whole place 
was amazing — the rich warm hue of the 
stone of which the Minster is built, which 
takes on a fine ochre-brown tinge where it is 
weathered, gives it a look of homely comfort, 
apart from the matchless dignity of clustered 
transept and soaring towers. Then the 
glowing and mellow brick of Lincoln, its 
scarlet roof tiles — what could be more satis- 
fying for instance than the dash of vivid red 
in the tiling of the old Palace as you see it 



Lincoln 113 

on the slope among its gardens from the op- 
posite upland? — its smoke-blackened fagades, 
the abundance, all over the hill, of old 
embowered gardens, full of trees and thickets 
and greenery, its grassy spaces, its creeper- 
clad houses; the whole effect is one of extra- 
ordinary richness of hue, of age vividly 
exuberant, splendidly adorned. 

I wandered transported about Cathedral 
and close, and became aware then of how 
strangely unadventurous in the matter of 
exploration one had always been as a boy. 
It was true that we children had scampered 
with my father's master-key from end to 
end of the Cathedral — wet mornings used 
constantly to be spent there — so that I know 
every staircase, gallery, clerestory, parapet, 
triforium, and roof-vault of the building — 
but I found in the close itself many houses, 
alleys, little streets, which I had actually 
never seen, or even suspected their existence. 

It was all full of little ghosts, and a tiny 
vignette shaped itself in memory at every 
corner, of some passing figure — a good- 



114 Retrospect 

natured Canon, a youthful friend, Levite or 
Nethinim, or some deadly enemy, the son 
perhaps of some old-established denizen of 
the close, with whom for some unknown 
reason the Chancery schoolroom proclaimed 
an inflexible feud. 

But when I came to see the old house 
itself — so little changed, so distinctly recol- 
lected — then I was indeed amazed at the 
torrent of little happy fragrant memories 
which seemed to pour from every doorway 
and window — the games, the meals, the 
plays, the literary projects, the readings, the 
telling of stories, the endless, pointless, 
enchanting wanderings with some breathless 
object in view, forgotten or transformed 
before it was ever attained or executed, of 
which children alone hold the secret. 

Best of all do I recollect long summer 
afternoons spent in the great secluded high- 
walled garden at the back, with its orchard, 
its mound covered with thickets, and the 
old tower of the city wall, which made a 
noble fortress in games of prowess or ad- 



Childhood 115 

venture. I can see the figure of my father 
in his cassock, holding a little book, walking 
up and down among the gooseberry-beds 
half the morning, as he developed one of his 
unwritten sermons for the Minster on the 
following day. 

I do not remember that very affectionate 
relations existed between us children; it was 
a society, based on good-humoured tolerance 
and a certain democratic respect for liberty, 
that nursery group; it had its cliques, its 
sections, its political emphasis, its diploma- 
cies ; but it was cordial rather than emotional, 
and bound together by common interests 
rather than by mutual devotion. 

This, for instance, was one of the ludicrous 
incidents which came back to me. There 
was an odd little mediaeval room on the 
ground-floor, given up as a sort of study, in 
the school sense, to my elder brother and 
myself. My younger brother, aged almost 
eight, to show his power, I suppose, or to 
protest against some probably quite real 
grievance or tangible indignity, came there 



ii6 Retrospect 

secretly one morning in our absence, took a 
shovelful of red-hot coals from the fire, laid 
them on the hearth-rug, and departed. The 
conflagration was discovered in time, the 
author of the crime detected, and even 
the most tolerant of supporters of nursery 
anarchy could find nothing to criticise or 
condemn in the punishment justly meted out 
to the offender. 

But here was the extraordinary part of 
it all. I am myself somewhat afraid of 
emotional retrospect, which seems to me as 
a rule to have a peculiarly pungent and 
unbearable smart about it. I do not as a 
rule like revisiting places which I have loved 
and where I have been happy; it is simply 
incurring quite unnecessary pain, and quite 
fruitless pain, deliberately to unearth buried 
memories of happiness. 

Now at Lincoln the other day I found, to 
my wonder and relief, that there was not 
the least touch of regret, no sense of sorrow 
or loss in the air. I did not want it all back 
again, nor would I have lived through it 



Old Days 117 

again, even if I could have done so. The 
thought of returning to it seemed puerile; 
it was charming, delightful, all full of golden 
prospects and sunny mornings, but an ex- 
perience which had yielded up its sweetness 
as a summer cloud yields its cooling rain, 
and passes over. Yet it was all a perfectly 
true, real, and actual part of my life, some- 
thing of which I could never lose hold and 
for which I could always be frankly grate- 
ful. Life has been by no means a scene of 
untroubled happiness since then; but there 
came to me that day, walking along the 
fragrant garden-paths, very clearly and dis- 
tinctly, the knowledge that one would not 
wish one's life to have been untroubled! 
Halcyon calm, heedless innocence, childish 
joy, was not after all the point — pretty things 
enough, but only as a change and a relief, or 
perhaps rather as a prelude to more serious 
business! I was, as a boy, afraid of life, 
hated its noise and scent, suspected it of 
cruelty and coarseness, wanted to keep it at 
arm's length. I feel very differently about 



ii8 Retrospect 

life now; it's a boisterous business enough, 
but does not molest one unduly; and a very 
little courage goes a long way in dealing 
with it! 

True, on looking back, the evolution was 
dim and obscure; there seemed many blind 
alleys and passages, many unnecessary winds 
and turns in the road; but for all that the 
trend was clear enough, at all events, to 
show that there was some great and not 
unkindly conspiracy about me and my con- 
cerns, involving everyone else's concerns as 
well, some good-humoured mystery, with a 
dash of shadow and sorrow across it perhaps, 
which would be soon cleared up ; some secret 
withheld as from a child, the very withholder 
of which seems to struggle with good-tem- 
pered laughter, partly at one's dulness in 
not being able to guess, partly at the pleasure 
in store. 

I think it is our impatience, our claim to 
have everything questionable made instantly 
and perfectly plain to us, which does the 
mischief — that, and the imagination which 



Past and Present 119 

never can forecast any relief or surcease of 
pain, and pays no heed whatever to the 
astounding brevity, the unutterable rapidity 
of human life. 

So, as I walked in the old garden, I simply 
rejoiced that I had a share in the place which 
could not be gainsaid; and that, even if the 
high towers themselves, with their melo- 
dious bells, should crumble into dust, I still 
had my dear memory of it all : the old life, 
the old voices, looks, embraces, came back 
in little glimpses; yet it was far away, long 
past, and I did not wish it back; the present 
seemed a perfectly natural and beautiful 
sequence, and that past life an old sweet 
chapter of some happy book, which needs 
no rewriting. 

So I looked back in joy and tenderness — 
and even with a sort of compassion; the 
child whom I saw sauntering along the grass 
paths of the garden, shaking the globed rain 
out of the poppy's head, gathering the waxen 
apples from the orchard grass, he was myself 
in very truth — there was no doubting that; 



120 Retrospect 

I hardly felt different. But I had gained 
something which he had not got, some open- 
ing of eye and heart ; and he had yet to bear, 
to experience, to pass through, the days 
which I had done with, and which, in spite 
of their much sweetness, had yet a bitterness, 
as of a healing drug, underneath them, and 
which I did not wish to taste again. No, I 
desired no renewal of old things, only the 
power of interpreting the things that were 
new, and through which even now one was 
passing swiftly and carelessly, as the boy 
ran among the fruit-trees of the garden; but 
it was not the golden fragrant husk of hap- 
piness that one wanted, but the seed hidden 
within it — experience was made sweet just 
that one might be tempted to live ! Yet the 
end of it all was not the pleasure or the joy 
that came and passed, the gaiety, even the 
innocence of childhood, but something stern 
and strong, which hardly showed at all at 
first, but at last seemed like the slow work 
of the graver of gems brushing away the 
glittering crystalline dust from the intaglio. 



XIV 

HUMOUR 

The Castle of Joyous Card was always full 
of laughter; not the wild giggling, I think, 
of reckless people, which the writer of Pro- 
verbs said was like the crackling of thorns 
under a pot; that is a wearisome and even 
an ugly thing, because it does not mean 
that people are honestly amused, but have 
some basely exciting thing in their minds. 
Laughter must be light-hearted, not light- 
minded. Still less was it the dismal tittering 
of ill-natured people over mean gossip, 
which is another of the ugly sounds of 
life. No, I think it was rather the laughter 
of cheerful people, glad to be amused, who 
hardly knew that they were laughing; that 
is a wholesome exercise enough. It was the 
laughter of men and women, with heavy 

121 



122 Humour 

enough business behind them and before 
them, but yet able in leisurely hours to find 
life full of merriment — the voice of joy and 
health! And I am sure too that it was not 
the guarded condescending laughter of saints 
who do not want to be out of sympathy 
with their neighbours, and laugh as pre- 
cisely and punctually as they might respond 
to a liturgy, if they discover that they are 
meant to be amused! 

Humour is one of the characteristics of 
Joyous Card, not humour resolutely culti- 
vated, but the humour which comes from 
a sane and healthy sense of proportion; and 
is a sign of light-heartedness rather than a 
thing aimed at ; a thing which flows naturally 
into the easy spaces of life, because it finds 
the oddities of life, the peculiarities of people, 
the incongruities of thought and speech, 
both charming and delightful. 

It is a great misfortune that so many 
people think it a mark of saintliness to be 
easily shocked, whereas the greatest saints 
of all are the people who are never shocked; 



The Tramps 123 

they may be distressed, they may wish 
things different; but to be shocked is often 
nothing but a mark of vanity, a self-conscious 
desire that others should know how high 
one's standard, how sensitive one's conscience 
is. I do not of course mean that one is 
bound to join in laughter, however coarse 
a jest may be; but the best-bred and finest- 
tempered people steer past such moments 
with a delicate tact; contrive to show that 
an ugly jest is not so much a thing to be 
disapproved of and rebuked, as a sign that 
the jester is not recognising the rights of his 
company, and is outstepping the laws of 
civility and decency. 

It is a very difficult thing to say what 
humour is, and probably it is a thing that is 
not worth trying to define. It resides in the 
incongruity of speech and behaviour with 
the surrounding circumstances. 

I remember once seeing two tramps dis- 
puting by the roadside, with the gravity 
which is given to human beings by being 
slightly overcome with drink. I suppose 



124 Humour 

that one ought not to be amused by the 
effects of drunkenness, but after all one does 
not wish people to be drunk that one may be 
amused. The two tramps in question were 
ragged and infinitely disreputable. Just as 
I came up, the more tattered of the two 
flung his hat on the ground, with a lofty 
gesture like that of a king abdicating, and 
said, "I '11 go no further with you!" The 
other said, "Why do you say that? Why 
will you go no further with me?" The first 
replied, "No, I '11 go no further with you!'* 
The other said, "I must know why you 
will go no further with me — you must tell 
me that!" The first replied, with great 
dignity, "Well, I will tell you that! It 
lowers my self-respect to be seen with a 
man like you!" 

That is the sort of incongruity I mean. 
The tragic solemnity of a man who might 
have changed clothes with the nearest 
scarecrow without a perceptible difference, 
and whose life was evidently not ordered by 
any excessive self-respect, falling back on 



Three Views 125 

the dignity of human nature in order to be 
rid of a companion as disreputable as him- 
self, is what makes the scene so grotesque, 
and yet in a sense so impressive, because it 
shows a lurking standard of conduct which 
no pitiableness of degradation could oblit- 
erate. I think that is a good illustration of 
what I mean by humour, because in the 
presence of such a scene it is possible to 
have three perfectly distinct emotions. One 
may be sorry with all one's heart that men 
should fall to such conditions, and feel that 
it is a stigma on our social machinery that it 
should be so. Those two melancholy figures 
were a sad blot upon the wholesome country- 
side ! Yet one may also discern a hope in the 
mere possibility of framing an ideal under 
such discouraging circumstances, which will 
be, I have no sort of doubt, a seed of good in 
the upward progress of the poor soiil which 
grasped it; because indeed I have no doubt 
that the miserable creature is on an upward 
path, and that even if there is no prospect for 
him in this life of anything but a dismal stum- 



126 Humour 

bling down into disease and want, yet I do 
not in the least believe that that is the end of 
his horizon or his pilgrimage; and thirdly, 
one may be genuinely and not in the least 
evilly amused at the contrast between the 
disreputable squalor of the scene and the 
lofty claim advanced. The three emotions 
are not at all inconsistent. The pessi- 
mistic moralist might say that it was all 
very shocking, the optimistic moralist might 
say that it was hopeful, the unreflective 
humourist might simply be transported 
by the absurdity; yet not to be amused at 
such a scene would appear to me to be 
both dull and priggish. It seems to me to 
be a false solemnity to be shocked at any 
lapses from perfection; a man might as well 
be shocked at the existence of a poisonous 
snake or a ravening tiger. One must "see 
life steadily and see it whole,'* and though 
we may and must hope that we shall struggle 
upwards out of the mess, we may still be 
amused at the dolorous figures we cut in the 
mire. 



Laughter 127 

I was once in the company of a grave, 
decorous, and well-dressed person who fell 
helplessly into a stream off a stepping-stone. 
I had no wish that he should fall, and I was 
perfectly conscious of intense sympathy with 
his discomfort; but I found the scene quite 
inexpressibly diverting, and I still simmer 
with laughter at the recollection of the dis- 
appearance of the trim figure, and his furious 
emergence, like an oozy water-god, from the 
pool. It is not in the least an ill-natured 
laughter. I did not desire the catastrophe, 
and I would have prevented it if I could; 
but it was dreadfully funny for all that ; and 
if a similar thing had happened to myself, 
I should not resent the enjoyment of the 
scene by a spectator, so long as I was helped 
and sympathised with, and the merriment 
decently repressed before me. 

I think that what is called practical joking, 
which aims at deliberately producing such 
situations, is a wholly detestable thing. But 
it is one thing to sacrifice another person's 
comfort to one's laughter, and quite another 



128 Humour 

to be amused at what a fire-insurance policy 
calls the act of God. 

And I am very sure of this, that the sane, 
healthy, well-balanced nature must have a 
fund of wholesome laughter in him, and 
that so far from trying to repress a sense of 
humour, as an unkind, unworthy, inhuman 
thing, there is no capacity of human nature 
which makes life so frank and pleasant a 
business. There are no companions so de- 
lightful as the people for whom one trea- 
sures up jests and reminiscences, because 
one is sure that they will respond to them 
and enjoy them; and indeed I have found 
that the power of being irresponsibly amused 
has come to my aid in the middle of really 
tragic and awful circumstances, and has 
relieved the strain more than anything else 
could have done. 

I do not say that humour is a thing to be 
endlessly indulged and sought after; but to 
be genuinely amused is a sign of courage 
and amiability, and a sign too that a man 
is not self-conscious and self-absorbed. It 



L ight- H eartedness 1 29 

ought not to be a settled preoccupation. 
Nothing is more wearisome than the habitual 
jester, because that signifies that a man 
is careless and unobservant of the moods 
of others. But it is a thing which should 
be generously and freely mingled with life; 
and the more sides that a man can see to any 
situation, the more rich and full his nature 
is sure to be. 

After all, our power of taking a light- 
hearted view of life is proportional to our 
interest in it, our belief in it, our hopes of it. 
Of course, if we conclude from our little piece 
of remembered experience, that life is a woe- 
ful thing, we shall be apt to do as the old poets 
thought the nightingale did, — to lean our 
breast against a thorn, that we may suffer 
the pain which we propose to utter in liquid 
notes. But that seems to me a false senti- 
ment and an artificial mode of life, to luxuri- 
ate in sorrow; even that is better than being 
crushed by it; but we may be sure that if 
we wilfully allow ourselves to be one-sided, 
it is a delaying of our progress. All ex- 



I30 Humour 

perience comes to us that we may not be 
one-sided; and if we learn to weep with those 
that weep, we must remember that it is no 
less our business to rejoice with those that 
rejoice. We are helped beyond measure 
by those who can tell us and convince us, 
as poets can, that there is something beauti- 
ful in sorrow and loss and severed ties; by 
those who show us the splendour of courage 
and patience and endurance; but the true 
faith is to believe that the end is joy; and 
we therefore owe perhaps the largest debt 
of all to those who encourage us to enjoy, 
to laugh, to smile, to be amused. 

And so we must not retire into our fortress 
simply for lonely visions, sweet contempla- 
tion, gentle imagination; there are rooms in 
our castle fit for that, the little book-lined 
cell, facing the sunset, the high parlour, 
where the gay, brisk music comes tripping 
down from the minstrels' gallery, the dim 
chapel for prayer, and the chamber called 
Peace — where the pilgrim slept till break of 
day, "and then he awoke and sang"; but 



Social Mirth 131 

there is also the well-Hghted hall, with 
cheerfiil company coming and going; where 
we must put our secluded, wistful, sorrow- 
ful thought aside, and mingle briskly with 
the pleasant throng, not steeling ourselves 
to mirth and movement, but simply glad and 
grateful to be there. 

It was while I was writing these pages 
that a friend told me that he had recently 
met a man, a merchant, I think, who did me 
the honour to discuss my writings at a 
party and to pronounce an opinion upon 
them. He said that I wrote many things 
which I did not believe, and then stood 
aside, and was amused in a humorous mood 
to see that other people believed them. It 
would be absurd to be, or even to feel, 
indignant at such a travesty of my purpose as 
this, and indeed I think that one is never 
very indignant at misrepresentation unless 
one's mind accuses itself of its being true or 
partially true. 

It is indeed true that I have said things 
about which I have since changed my mind, 



132 Humour 

as indeed I hope I shall continue to change 
it, and as swiftly as possible, if I see that 
the former opinions are not justified. To 
be thus criticised is, I think, the perfectly- 
natural penalty of having tried to be serious 
without being also solemn; there are many 
people, and many of them very worthy people, 
like our friend the merchant, who cannot 
believe one is in earnest if one is not also 
heavy-handed. Earnestness is mixed up in 
their minds with bawling and sweating; and 
indeed it is quite true that most people who 
are willing to bawl and sweat in public, feel 
earnestly about the subjects to which they 
thus address themselves. But I do not see 
that earnestness is in the least incompatible 
with lightness of touch and even with 
humour, though I have sometimes been 
accused of displaying none. Socrates was 
in earnest about his ideas, but the penalty 
he paid for treating them lightly was that 
he was put to death for being so sceptical. 
I should not at all like the idea of being put 
to death for my ideas; but I am wholly in 



Earnestness 133 

earnest about them, and have never con- 
sciously said anything in which I did not 
believe. 

But I will go one step further and say 
that I think that many earnest men do great 
harm to the causes they advocate, because 
they treat ideas so heavily, and divest them 
of their charm. One of the reasons why 
virtue and goodness are not more attractive 
is because they get into the hands of 
people without lightness or humour, and 
even without courtesy; and thus the pur- 
suit of virtue seems not only to the young, 
but to many older people, to be a boring 
occupation, and to be conducted in an 
atmosphere heavy with disapproval, with 
dreariness and dulness and tiresomeness 
hemming the neophyte in, like fat bulls of 
Bashan. It is because I should like to 
rescue goodness, which is the best thing 
in the world, next to love, from these 
growing influences, that I have written as I 
have done; but there is no lurking cynicism 
in my books at all, and the worst thing I 



134 Humour 

can accuse myself of is a sense of humour, 
perhaps whimsical and childish, which seems 
to me to make a pleasant and refreshing 
companion, as one passes on pilgrimage in 
search of what I believe to be very high and 
heavenly things indeed. 



XV 



VISIONS 



I USED as a child to pore over the Apo- 
calypse, which I thought by far the most 
beautiful and absorbing of all the books of 
the Bible; it seemed full of rich and dim 
pictures, things which I could not interpret 
and did not wish to interpret, the shining 
of clear gem-like walls, lonely riders, amaz- 
ing monsters, sealed books, all of which 
took perfectly definite shape in the childish 
imagination. The consequence is that I can 
no more criticise it than I could criticise old 
tapestries or pictures familiar from infancy. 
They are there, just so, and any difference 
of form is inconceivable. 

In one point, however, the strange visions 
have come to hold for me an increased 
grandeur; I used to think of much of it 
135 



136 Visions 

as a sort of dramatic performance, self-con- 
sciously enacted for the benefit of the 
spectator; but now I think of it as an awful 
and spontaneous energy of spiritual life 
going on, of which the prophet was enabled 
to catch a glimpse. Those "voices crying 
day and night " "the new song that was sung 
before the throne," the cry of "Come and 
see" — these were but part of a vast and 
urgent business, which the prophet was 
allowed to overhear. It is not a silent place, 
that highest heaven, of indolence and placid 
peace, but a scene of fierce activity and the 
clamour of mighty voices. 

And it is the same too of another strange 
scene — the Transfiguration; not an impres- 
sive spectacle arranged for the Apostles, 
but a peep into the awful background behind 
life. Let me use a simple parable : Imagine 
a man who had a friend whom he greatly 
admired and loved, and suppose him to be 
talking with his friend, who suddenly excuses 
himself on the plea of an engagement and 
goes out; and the other follows him, out 



The Transfiguration 137 

of curiosity, and sees him meet another man 
and talk intently with him, not deferentially 
or humbly, but as a man talks with an equal. 
And then drawing nearer he might suddenly 
see that the man his friend has gone out to 
meet, and with whom he is talking so in- 
tently, is some high minister of State, or 
even the King himself! 

That is a simple comparison, to make clear 
what the Apostles might have felt. They 
had gone into the mountain expecting 
their Master to speak quietly to them or to 
betake himself to silent prayer; and then 
they find him robed in light and holding 
converse with the spirits of the air, telling 
his plans, so to speak, to two great prophets 
of the ancient world. 

If this had been but a pageant enacted for 
their benefit to dazzle and bewilder them, 
it would have been a poor and self-conscious 
affair; but it becomes a scene of portentous 
mystery, if one thinks of them as being per- 
mitted to have a glimpse of the high, urgent, 
and terrifying things that were going on all 



138 Visions 

the time in the unseen background of the 
Saviour's mind. The essence of the great- 
ness of the scene is that it was overheard. 
And thus I think that wonder and beauty, 
those two mighty forces, take on a very 
different value for us when we can come to 
realise that they are small hints given us, 
tiny glimpses conceded to us, of some very 
great and mysterious thing that is pressingly 
and speedily proceeding, every day and 
every hour, in the vast background of life; 
and we ought to realise that it is not only 
human life as we see it which is the active, 
busy, forceful thing; that the world with 
all its noisy cities, its movements and its 
bustle, is not a burning point hung in dark- 
ness and silence, but that it is just a little 
fretful affair with infinitely larger, louder, 
fiercer, stronger powers, working, moving, 
pressing onwards, thundering in the back- 
ground; and that the huge forces, laws, 
activities, behind the world, are not per- 
ceived by us any more than we perceive 
the vast motion of great winds, except in 



Inconsistency 139 

so far as we see the face of the waters 
rippled by them, or the trees bowed all one 
way in their passage. 

It is very easy to be so taken up with the 
little absorbing businesses, the froth and 
ripple of life, that we forget what great and 
secret influences they must be that cause 
them; we must not forget that we are only 
like children playing in the nursery of a 
palace, while in the Council-room beneath 
us a debate may be going on which is to 
affect the lives and happiness of thousands 
of households. 

And therefore the more that we make up 
our little beliefs and ideas, as a man folds 
up a little packet of food which he is to eat 
on a journey, and think in so doing that we 
have got a satisfactory explanation of all our 
aims and problems, the more utterly we are 
failing to take in the significance of what is 
happening. We must never allow ourselves 
to make up our minds, and to get our theories 
comfortably settled, because then experience 
is at an end for us, and we shall see no more 



140 Visions 

than we expect to see. We ought rather 
to be amazed and astonished, day by day, 
at all the wonderful and beautiful things we 
encounter, the marvellous hints of loveliness 
which we see in faces, woods, hills, gardens, 
all showing some tremendous force at work, 
often thwarted, often spoiled, but still work- 
ing, with an infinity of tender patience, to 
make the world exquisite and fine. There 
are ugly, coarse, disgusting things at work 
too — we cannot help seeing that; but even 
many of them seem to be destroying, in 
corruption and evil odour, something that 
ought not to be there, and striving to be 
clean and pure again. 

I often wonder whose was the mind that 
conceived the visions of the Apocalypse; 
if we can trust tradition, it was a confined 
and exiled Christian in a lonely island, 
whose spirit reached out beyond the little 
crags and the beating seas of his prison, and 
in the seeming silent heaven detected the 
gathering of monsters, the war of relentless 
forces — and beyond it all the radiant energies 



Behind the Veil 141 

of saints, glad to be together and unanimous, 
in a place where light and beauty at last 
could reign triumphant. 

I know no literature more ineffably dreary 
than the parcelling out of these wild and 
glorious visions, the attaching of them to 
this and that petty human fulfilment. That 
is not the secret of the Apocalypse! It is 
rather as a painter may draw a picture of 
two lovers sitting together at evening in a 
latticed chamber, holding each other's hands, 
gazing in each other's eyes. He is not 
thinking of particular persons in an actual 
house; it is rather a hint of love making 
itself manifest, recognising itself to be met 
with an answering rapture. And what I 
think that the prophet meant was rather to 
show that we must not be deceived by cares 
and anxieties and daily business; but that 
behind the little simmering of the world was 
a ttimult of vast forces, voices crying and 
answering, thunder, fire, infinite music. It is 
all a command to recognise unseen greatness, 
to take every least experience we can, and 



142 Visions 

crush from it all its savour; not to be afraid 
of the great emotions of the world, love and 
sorrow and loss; but only to be afraid of 
what is petty and sordid and mean. And 
then perhaps, as in that other vision, we 
may ascend once into a mountain, and there 
in weariness and drowsiness, dumbly be- 
wildered by the night and the cold and the 
discomforts of the unkindly air, life may be 
for a moment transfigured into a radiant 
figure, still familiar though so glorified; 
and we may see it for once touch hands and 
exchange words with old and wise spirits; 
and all this not only to excite us and be- 
wilder us, but so that by the drawing of the 
veil aside, we may see for a moment that 
there is some high and splendid secret, some 
celestial business proceeding with solemn 
patience and strange momentousness, a rite 
which if we cannot share, we may at least 
know is there, and waiting for us, the moment 
that we are strong enough to take our part! 



XVI 

THOUGHT 

A FRIEND of mine had once a strange dream ; 
he seemed to himself to be walking in a day 
of high summer on a grassy moorland leading 
up to some fantastically piled granite crags. 
He made his way slowly thither; it was ter- 
ribly hot there among the sun- warmed rocks, 
and he found a little natural cave, among 
the great boulders, fringed with fern. There 
he sate for a long time while the sun passed 
over, and a little breeze came wandering up 
the moor. Opposite him as he sate was the 
face of a great pile of rocks, and while his 
eye dwelt upon it, it suddenly began to wink 
and glisten with little moving points, dots 
so minute that he could hardly distinguish 
them. Suddenly, as if at a signal, the little 
points dropped from the rock, and the whole 
143 



144 Thought 

surface seemed alive with gossamer threads, 
as if a silken, silvery curtain had been let 
down; presently the little dots reached the 
grass and began to crawl over it; and then 
he saw that each of them was attached to 
one of the fine threads; and he thought that 
they were a colony of minute spiders, living 
on the face of the rocks. He got up to see 
this wonder close at hand, but the moment 
he moved, the whole curtain was drawn up 
with incredible swiftness, as if the threads 
were highly elastic; and when he reached 
the rock, it was as hard and solid as before, 
nor could he discover any sign of the little 
creatures. "Ah," he said to himself in the 
dream, "that is the meaning of the living 
rock!" and he became aware, he thought, 
that all rocks and stones on the surface of 
the earth must be thus endowed with life, 
and that the rocks were, so to speak, but 
the shell that contained these innumerable 
little creatures, incredibly minute, living, 
silken threads, with a small head, like boring 
worms, inhabiting burrows which went far 



A Dream 145 

into the heart of the granite, and each with 
a strong retractile power. 

I told this dream to a geologist the other 
day, who laughed. "An ingenious idea,** he 
said, "and there may even be something in 
it! It is not by any means certain that 
stones do not have a certain obscure life of 
their own; I have sometimes thought that 
their marvellous cohesion may be a sign of 
life, and that if life were withdrawn, a moun- 
tain might in a moment become a heap of 
sliding sand." 

My friend said that the dream made such 
an impression upon him that for a time he 
found it hard to believe that stones and 
rocks had not this strange and secret life 
lurking in their recesses; and indeed it has 
since stood to me as a symbol of life, haunt- 
ing and penetrating all the very hardest 
and driest things. It seems to me that just 
as there are almost certainly more colours 
than our eyes can perceive, and sounds 
either too acute or too deliberate for our 
ears to hear, so the domain of life may be 



146 Thought 

much further extended in the earth, the air, 
the waters, than we can tangibly detect. 

It seems, too, to show me that it is our 
business to try ceaselessly to discover the 
secret life of thought in the world; not to 
conclude that there is no vitality in thought 
unless we can ourselves at once perceive it. 
This is particularly the case with books. 
Sometimes, in our College Library, I take 
down an old folio from the shelves, and as 
I turn the crackling, stained, irregular pages 
— it may be a volume of controversial divinity 
or outworn philosophy — it seems impossible 
to imagine that it can ever have been woven 
out of the live brain of man, or that anyone 
can ever have been found to follow those 
old, vehement, insecure arguments, starting 
from unproved data, and leading to erroneous 
and fanciful conclusions. The whole thing 
seems so faded, so dreary, so remote from 
reality, that one cannot even dimly imagine 
the frame of mind which originated it, and 
still less the mood which fed upon such 
things. 



Geology 147 

Yet I very much doubt if the aims, ideas, 
hopes of man, have altered very much since 
the time of the earHest records. When one 
comes to reaHse that geologists reckon a 
period of thirty million years at least, while 
the Triassic rocks, that is the lowest stratum 
that shows signs of life, were being laid 
down; and that all recorded history is but 
an infinitesimal drop in the ocean of un- 
recorded time, one sees at least that the 
force behind the world, by whatever name 
we call it, is a force that cannot by any 
means be hurried, but that it works with a 
leisureliness which we with our brief and 
hasty span of life cannot really in any sense 
conceive. Still, it seems to have a plan! 
Those strange horned, humped, armoured 
beasts of prehistoric rocks are all bewilder- 
ingly like ourselves so far as physical con- 
struction goes; they had heart, brain, eyes, 
lungs, legs, a similarly planned skeleton; it 
seems as if the creative spirit was working 
by a well-conceived pattern, was trying to 
make a very definite kind of thing; there is 



148 Thought 

not by any means an infinite variety, when 
one considers the sort of creatures that even 
a man could devise and invent, if he tried. 
There is the same sort of continuity and 
unity in thought. The preoccupations of 
man are the same in all ages — to provide 
for his material needs, and to speculate what 
can possibly happen to his spirit, when the 
body, broken by accident or disease or 
decay, can no longer contain his soul. The 
best thought of man has always been 
centred on trying to devise some sort of 
future hope which could encourage him to 
live eagerly, to endure patiently, to act 
rightly. As science opens her vast volume 
before us, we naturally become more and 
more impatient of the hasty guesses of man, 
in religion and philosophy, to define what 
we cannot yet know; but we ought to be 
very tender of the old passionate beliefs, 
the intense desire to credit noble and lofty 
spirits, such as Buddha and Mahomet, 
with some source of divinely given know- 
ledge. Yet of course there is an inevitable 



Law 149 

sadness when we find the old certainties 
dissolving in mist; and we must be very 
careful to substitute for them, if they slip 
from our grasp, some sort of principle which 
will give us freshness and courage. To me, 
I confess, the tiny certainties of science are 
far more inspiring than the most ardent 
reveries of imaginative men. The knowledge 
that there is in the world an inflexible order, 
and that we shall see what we shall see, and 
not what we would like to believe, is in- 
finitely refreshing and sustaining. I feel 
that I am journeying onwards into what is 
unknown to me, but into something which 
is inevitably there, and not to be altered by 
my own hopes and fancies. It is like taking 
a voyage, the pleasure of which is that the 
sights in store are unexpected and novel; 
for a voyage would be a very poor thing if 
we knew exactly what lay ahead, and poorer 
still if we could determine beforehand what 
we meant to see, and could only behold the 
pictures of our own imaginations. That is 
the charm and the use of experience, that it 



150 Thought 

is not at all what we expect or hope. It is 
in some ways sadder and darker; but it is in 
most ways far more rich and wonderful and 
radiant than we had dreamed. 

What I grow impatient of are the censures 
of rigid people, who desire to limit the 
hopes and possibilities of others by the little 
foot-rule which they have made for them- 
selves. That is a very petty and even a 
very wicked thing to do, that old persecuting 
instinct which says, "I will make it as un- 
pleasant for you as I can, if you will not 
consent at all events to pretend to believe 
what I think it right to believe. " A man of 
science does not want to persecute a child 
who says petulantly that he will not believe 
the law of gravity. He merely smiles and 
goes on his way. The law of gravity can 
look after itself! Persecution is as often as 
not an attempt to reassure oneself about 
one's own beliefs; it is not a sign of an 
untroubled faith. 

We must not allow ourselves to be shaken 
by any attempt to dictate to us what we 



Belief in Life 151 

should believe. We need not always pro- 
test against it, unless we feel it a duty to 
do so; we may simply regard another's 
certainties as things which are not and 
cannot be proved. Argument on such sub- 
jects is merely a waste of time; but at the 
same time we ought to recognise the vitality 
which lies behind such tenacious beliefs, and 
be glad that it is there, even if we think it 
to be mistaken. 

And this brings me back to my first point, 
which is that it is good for us to try to 
realise the hidden life of the world, and to 
rejoice in it even though it has no truth for 
us. We must never disbelieve in life, even 
though in sickness and sorrow and age it 
may seem to ebb from us; and we must try 
at all costs to recognise it, to sympathise 
with it, to put ourselves in touch with it, 
even though it takes forms unintelligible 
and even repugnant to ourselves. 

Let me try to translate this into very 
practical matters. We many of us find our- 
selves in a fixed relation to a certain circle 



152 Thought 

of people. We cannot break with them or 
abandon them. Perhaps our livelihood de- 
pends upon them, or theirs upon us. Yet 
we may find them harsh, unsympathetic, 
unkind, objectionable. What are we to do? 
Many people let the whole tangle go, and 
just creep along, doing what they do not 
like, feeling unappreciated and misunder- 
stood, just hoping to avoid active collisions 
and unpleasant scenes. That is a very 
spiritless business! What we ought to do 
is to find points of contact, even at the cost 
of some repression of our own views and 
aims. And we ought too to nourish a fine 
life of our own, to look into the lives of 
other people, which can be done perhaps 
best in large books, fine biographies, great 
works of imagination and fiction. We must 
not drowse and brood in our own sombre 
corner, when life is flowing free and full 
outside as in some flashing river. How- 
ever little chance we may seem to have of 
doing anything, we can at least determine 
to he something; not to let our life be filled, 



Doctrines 153 

like some base vessel, with the offscourings 
and rinsings of other spirits, but to remember 
that the water of life is given freely to all 
who come. That is the worst of our dull 
view of the great Gospel of Christ. We 
think — I do not say this profanely but 
seriously — of that water of life as a series 
of propositions like the Athanasian Creed! 

Christ meant something very different by 
the water of life. He meant that the soul 
that was athirst could receive a draught of 
a spring of cool refreshment and living joy. 
He did not mean a set of doctrines ; doctrines 
are to life what parchments and title-deeds 
are to an estate with woods and waters, 
fields and gardens, houses and cottages, and 
live people moving to and fro. It is of no 
use to possess the title-deed if one does not 
visit one's estate. Doctrines are an attempt 
to state, in bare and precise language, ideas 
and thoughts dear and fresh to the heart. 
It is in qualities, hopes, and affections that 
we live; and if our eyes are opened, we can 
see, as my friend dreamed he saw, the 



154 Thought 

surface of the hard rock full of moving 
points, and shimmering with threads of 
swift life, when the sun has fallen from the 
height, and the wind comes cool across the 
moor from the open gates of the evening. 



XVII 

ACCESSIBILITY 

I WAS greatly interested the other day by 
seeing a photograph, in his old age, of Henry 
Phillpotts, the redoubtable Bishop of Exeter, 
who lost more money in lawsuits with 
clergymen than any Bishop, I suppose, who 
ever lived. He sate, the old man, in his 
clumsily fitting gaiters, bowed or crouched 
in an arm-chair, reading a letter. His face 
was turned to the spectator; with his stiff, 
upstanding hair, his out-thrust lip, his corru- 
gated brow, and the deep pouched lines 
beneath his eyes, he looked like a terrible 
old lion, who could no longer spring, but 
who had not forgotten how to roar. His 
face was full of displeasure and anger. I 
remembered that a clergyman once told me 
how he had been sitting next the Bishop at 
155 



156 Accessibility 

a dinner of parsons, and a young curate, 
sitting on the other side of the Bishop, 
affronted him by beHeving him to be deaf, 
and by speaking very loudly and distinctly 
to him. The Bishop at last turned to him, 
with a furious visage, and said, **I would 
have you to understand, sir, that I am not 
deaf!" This disconcerted the young man 
so much that he could neither speak nor 
eat. The old Bishop turned to my friend, 
and said, in a heavy tone, "I 'm not fit for 
society!" Indeed he was not, if he could 
unchain so fierce a beast on such slight 
provocation. 

And there are many other stories of the 
bitter things he said, and how his displeasure 
could brood like a cloud over a whole com- 
pany. He was a gallant old figure, it is 
true, very energetic, very able, determined 
to do what he thought right, and infinitely 
courageous. I mused over the portrait, 
thought how lifelike and picturesque it was, 
and how utterly unlike one's idea of an aged 
Christian or a chief shepherd. In his beauti- 



Bishop Phillpotts 157 

ful villa by the sea, with its hanging woods 
and gardens, ruling with diligence, he seemed 
to me more like a stoical Roman Emperor, 
or a tempestuous Sadducee, the spirit of the 
world incarnate. One wondered what it 
could have been that had drawn him to 
Christ, or what part he would have taken 
if he had been on the Sanhedrin that judged 
Him! 

It seems to me that one of the first charac- 
teristics which one ought to do one's best to 
cast out of one's life is that of formidable- 
ness. Yet to tell a man that he is formidable 
is not an accusation that is often resented. 
He may indulgently deprecate it, but it 
seems to most people a sort of testimonial 
to their force and weight and influence, a 
penalty that they have to pay for being 
effective, a matter of prestige and honour. 
Of course, an old, famous, dignified man 
who has played a great part on the stage 
of life must necessarily be approached by 
the young with a certain awe. But there 
is no charm in the world more beautiful 



158 Accessibility 

than the charm which can permeate dignity, 
give confidence, awake affection, dissipate 
dread. But if a man of that sort indulges 
his moods, says what he thinks bluntly and 
fiercely, has no mercy on feebleness or 
ignorance, he can be a very dreadful per- 
sonage indeed! 

Accessibility is one of the first of Christian 
virtues; but it is not always easy to practise, 
because a man of force and ability, who is 
modest and shy, forgets as life goes on how 
much more his influence is felt. He himself 
does not feel at all different from what he 
was when he was young, when he was 
snubbed and silenced and set down in argu- 
ment. Perhaps he feels that the world is a 
kinder and an easier place, as he grows into 
deference and esteem, but it is the surest 
sign of a noble and beautiful character if the 
greater he becomes the more simple and 
tender he also becomes. 

I was greatly interested the other day in 
attending a meeting at which, among other 
speakers, two well-known men spoke. The 



Two Speakers 159 

first was a man of great renown and pres- 
tige, and he made a very beautiful, lofty, and 
tender discourse; but, from some shyness 
or gravity of nature, he never smiled or 
looked at his audience; and thus, fine though 
his speech was, he never got into touch with 
us at all. The second speech was far more 
obvious and commonplace, but the speaker, 
on beginning, cast a friendly look round and 
smiled on the audience ; and he did the same 
all the time, so that one had at once a friendly 
sense of contact and geniality, and I felt that 
every word was addressed to me personally. 
That is what it is to be accessible ! 

One of the best ways in which we can 
keep the spirit of poetry — by which I mean 
the higher, sweeter, purer influences of 
thought — alive in one's heart, is by accessi- 
bility — by determining to speak freely of 
what one admires and loves, what moves 
and touches one, what keeps one's mind 
upon the inner and finer life. It is not 
always possible or indeed convenient for 
younger people to do this, for reasons which 



i6o Accessibility 

are not wholly bad reasons. Young people 
ought not to be too eager to take the lead 
in talk, nor ought they to be too openly 
impatient of the more sedate and prosaic 
discourse of their elders; and then, too, 
there is a time for all things; one cannot 
keep the mind always on the strain; and 
the best and most beautiful things are 
apt to come in glimpses and hints, and are 
not always arrived at by discussion and 
argument. 

There is a story of a great artist full of 
sympathy and kindness, to whom in a single 
day three several people came to confide sad 
troubles and trials. The artist told the story 
to his wife in the evening. He said that he 
was afraid that the third of the visitors 
thought him strangely indifferent and even 
unkind. " The fact was, " he said, "that my 
capacity for sympathy was really exhausted. 
I had suffered so much from the first two 
recitals that I could not be sorry any more. 
I said I was sorry, and I was sorry far down 
in my mind, but I could not feel sorry. I 



Sympathy i6i 

had given all the sympathy I had, and it was 
no use going again to the well when there 
was no more water." This shows that one 
cannot command emotion, and that one 
must not force even thoughts of beauty upon 
others. We must bide our time, we must 
adapt ourselves, and we must not be instant 
in season and out of season. Yet neither 
must we be wholly at the mercy of moods. 
In religion, the theory of liturgical worship 
is an attempt to realise that we ought to 
practise religious emotion with regularity. 
We do not always feel we are miserable 
sinners when we say so, and we sometimes 
feel that we are when we do not say it; but 
it is better to confess what we know to be 
true, even if at that moment we do not feel 
it to be true. 

We ought not then always, out of modesty, 
to abstain from talking about the things 
for which we care. A foolish shyness will 
sometimes keep two sympathetic people 
from ever talking freely together of their 
real hopes and interests. We are terribly 



1 62 Accessibility 

afraid in England of what we call priggish- 
ness. It is on the whole a wholesome 
tendency, but it is the result of a lack of 
flexibility of mind. What we ought to be 
afraid of is not seriousness and earnestness, 
but solemnity and pomposity. We ought 
to be ready to vary our mood swiftly, and 
even to see the humorous side of sacred 
and beautiful things. The oppressiveness of 
people who hold a great many things sacred, 
and cannot bear that they should be jested 
about, is very great. There is nothing that 
takes all naturalness out of intercourse more 
quickly than the habit which some people 
have of begging that a subject may not be 
pursued "because it is one on which I feel 
very deeply." That is the essence of prig- 
gishness, to feel that our reasons are better, 
our motives purer, than the reasons of other 
people, and that we have the privilege of 
setting a standard. Conscious superiority 
is the note of the prig; and we have the 
right to dread it. 

But the Gospel again is full of precepts in 



Intimacy 163 

favour of frankness, outspokenness, letting 
light shine out, speaking sincerely; only it 
must not be done provokingly, condescend- 
ingly, solemnly. It is well for everyone to 
have a friend or friends with whom he can 
talk quite unaffectedly about what he cares 
for and values; and he ought to be able to 
say to such a friend, "I cannot talk about 
these things now; I am in a dusty, prosaic, 
grubby mood, and I want to make mud- 
pies"; the point is to be natural, and yet to 
keep a watch upon nature; not to force her 
into cramped postures, and yet not to indulge 
her in rude, careless, and vulgar postures. 
It is a bad sign in friendship, if intimacy 
seems to a man to give him the right to 
be rude, coarse, boisterous, censorious, if 
he will. He may sometimes be betrayed 
into each and all of these things, and be glad 
of a safety-valve for his ill-humours, knowing 
that he will not be permanently misunder- 
stood by a sympathetic friend. But there 
must be a discipline in all these things, and 
nature must often give way and be broken 



164 Accessibility 

in; frankness must not degenerate into 
boorishness, and liberty must not be the 
power of interfering with the liberty of 
the friend. One must force oneself to be 
courteous, interested, sweet-tempered, when 
one feels just the contrary; one must keep 
in sight the principle, and if violence must 
be done it must not be done to the better 
nature. Least of all must one deliberately 
take up the role of exercising influence. 
That is a sad snare to many fine natures. 
One sees a weak, attractive character, and 
it seems so tempting to train it up a stick, 
to fortify it, to mould it. If one is a pro- 
fessed teacher, one has to try this some- 
times; but even then, the temptation to 
drive rather than lead must be strenuously 
resisted. 

I have always a very dark suspicion of 
people who talk of spheres of influence, and 
who enjoy consciously affecting other lives. 
If this is done professionally, as a joyful sort 
of exercise, it is deadly. The only excuse 
for it is that one really cares for people 



Solemnity 165 

and longs to be of use; one cannot pump 
one's own tastes and character into others. 
The only hope is that they should develop 
their own qualities. Other people ought 
not to be ''problems" to us; they may be 
mysteries, but that is quite another thing. 
To love people, if one can, is the only way. 
To find out what is lovable in them and not 
to try to discover what is malleable in them 
is the secret. A wise and witty lady, who 
knows that she is tempted to try to direct 
other lives, told me that one of her friends 
once remonstrated with her by saying that 
she ought to leave something for God to do! 
I know a very terrible and well-meaning 
person, who once spoke severely to me for 
treating a matter with levity. I lost my 
temper, and said, "You may make me 
ashamed of it, if you can, but you shall not 
bully me into treating a matter seriously 
which I think is wholly absurd.'* He said, 
"You do not enough consider the grave 
issues which may be involved." I replied 
that to be for ever considering grave issues 



1 66 Accessibility 

seemed to me to make life stuffy and un- 
wholesome. My censor sighed and shook 
his head. 

We cannot coerce anyone into anything 
good. We may salve our own conscience 
by trying to do so, we may even level an 
immediate difficulty ; but a free and generous 
desire to be different is the only hope of vital 
change. The detestable Puritan fibre that 
exists in many of us, which is the most 
utterly unchristian thing I know, tempts us 
to feel that no discipline is worth anything 
unless it is dark and gloomy; but that is 
the discipline of the law-court and the prison, 
and has never remedied anything since the 
world began. Wickedness is nearly always, 
perhaps always, a moral invalidism, and we 
shall see some day that to punish men for 
crime by being cruel to them is like con- 
demning a man to the tread-mill for hav- 
ing typhoid fever. I can only say that the 
more I have known of human beings, and 
the older I grow, the more lovable, gentle, 
sweet-tempered I have found them to be. 



Carlyle 167 

The life of Carlyle seems to me to be one 
of the most terrible and convincing docu- 
ments in the world in proof of what I have 
been saying. The old man was so bent on 
battering and bumping people into righteous- 
ness, so in love with spluttering and vituper- 
ating and thundering all over the place, that 
he missed the truest and sweetest ministry 
of love. He broke his wife's heart, and it is 
idle to pretend he did not. Mrs. Carlyle 
was a sharp-edged woman too, and hurt her 
own life by her bitter trenchancy. But 
there was enough true love and loyalty and 
chivalry in the pair to furnish out a hundred 
marriages. Yet one sees Carlyle stamping 
and cursing through life, and never seeing 
what lay close to his hand. I admire his 
life, not because it was a triumph, but be- 
cause it was such a colossal failure, and so 
finely atoned for by the noble and great- 
minded repentance of a man who recognised 
at last that it was of no use to begin by try- 
ing to be ruler over ten cities, unless he was 
first faithful in a few things. 



XVIII 



SYMPATHY 



But there is one thing which we must con- 
stantly bear in mind, and which all en- 
thusiastic people must particularly recollect, 
namely, that our delight and interest in life 
must be large, tolerant, and sympathetic, 
and that we must not only admit but wel- 
come an immense variety of interests. We 
must above all things be just, and we must be 
ready to be both interested and amused by 
people whom we do not like. The point 
is that minds should be fresh and clear, 
rather than stagnant and lustreless. En- 
thusiastic people, who feel very strongly 
and eagerly the beauty of one particular 
kind of delight, are sadly apt to wish to 
impose their own preferences upon other 
minds, and not to believe in the worth 

i68 



The Unpardonable Sin 169 

of others' preferences. Thus the men who 
feel very ardently the beauty of the Greek 
Classics are apt to insist that all boys shall 
be brought up upon them; and the same 
thing happens in other matters. We must 
not make a moral law out of our own tastes 
and preferences, and we must be content 
that others should feel the appeal of other 
sorts of beauty; that was the mistake which 
dogged the radiant path of Ruskin from 
first to last, that he could not bear that 
other people should have their own pre- 
ferences, but considered that any dissidence 
from his own standards was of the nature 
of sin. If we insist on all agreeing with 
ourselves it is sterile enough; but if we 
begin calling other people hard names, and 
suspecting or vituperating their motives for 
disagreeing with us, we sin both against 
Love and Light. It was that spirit which 
called forth from Christ the sternest denun- 
ciation which ever fell from His lips. The 
Pharisees tried to discredit His work by re- 
presenting Him as in league with the powers 



170 Sympathy 

of evil; and this sin, which is the imputing 
of evil motives to actions and beliefs that 
appear to be good, because our own beliefs 
are too narrow to include them, is the sin 
which Christ said could find no forgiveness. 
I had a personal instance of this the other 
day which illustrates so clearly what I mean 
that I will quote it. I wrote a book called 
The Child of the Dawn, the point of which was 
to represent, in an allegory, my sincere belief 
that the after-life of man must be a life of 
effort, and experience, and growth. A lady 
wrote me a very discourteous letter to say 
that she believed the after-life to be one of 
Rest, and that she held what she believed to 
be my view to be unchristian and untrue. 
The notion that ardent, loving, eager spirits 
should be required to spend eternity in a 
sort of lazy contentment, forbidden to stir 
a finger for love and truth and right, is surely 
an insupportable one! What would be the 
joy of heaven to a soul full of energy and 
love, condemned to such luxurious apathy, 
forced to drowse through the ages in 



Censoriousness 171 

epicurean ease? If heaven has any mean- 
ing at all, it must satisfy our best and most 
active aspirations; and a paradise of utter 
and eternal indolence would be purgatory 
or hell to all noble natiu*es. But this 
poor creature, tired no doubt by life and 
its anxieties, overcome by dreariness and 
sorrow, was not only desirous of solitary 
and profound repose, but determined to 
impose her own theory upon all the world 
as well. I blame no one for desiring rest; 
but to wish, as she made no secret that she 
wished, to crush and confound one who 
thought and hoped otherwise, does seem to 
me a very mean and wretched point of view. 
That, alas, is what many people mean when 
they say that they believe a thing, namely, 
that they would be personally annoyed if it 
turned out to be different from what they 
hoped. 

I am sure that we ought rather to wel- 
come with all our might any evidence of 
strength and energy and joy, even if they 
seem to spring from principles entirely 



172 Sympathy 

opposite to our own. The more we know 
of men and women, the more we ought to 
perceive that half the trouble in the world 
comes from our calling the same principles 
by different names. We are not called upon 
to give up our own principles, but we must 
beware of trying to meddle with the principles 
of other people. 

And therefore we must never be disturbed 
and still less annoyed by other people find- 
ing fault with our tastes and principles, 
calling them fantastic and sentimental, weak 
and affected, so long as they do not seek to 
impose their own beliefs upon us. That they 
should do so is of course a mistake; but we 
must recognise that it comes either from the 
stupidity which is the result of a lack of 
sympathy, or else from the nobler error of 
holding an opinion strongly and earnestly. 
We must never be betrayed into making the 
same mistake ; we may try to persuade, and 
it is better done by example than by argu- 
ment, but we must never allow ourselves to 
scoff and deride, and still less to abuse and 



The Other Point of View 173 

vilify. We must rather do our best to 
understand the other point of view, and to 
acquiesce in the possibility of its being held, 
even if we cannot understand it. We must 
take for granted that everyone whose life 
shows evidence of energy, unselfishness, 
joyfulness, ardour, peacefulness, is truly in- 
spired by the spirit of good. We must 
believe that they have a vision of beauty 
and delight, born of the spirit. We must 
rejoice if they are making plain to other 
minds any interpretation of life, any enrich- 
ment of motive, any protest against things 
coarse and low and mean. We may wish — 
and we may try to persuade them — that their 
hopes and aims were wider, more bounti- 
ful, and more inclusive, but if we seek to 
exclude those hopes and aims, however 
inconsistent they may be with our own, that 
moment the shadow involves our own hopes, 
because our desire must be that the world 
may somehow become happier, fuller, more 
joyful, even if it is not on the lines which 
we ourselves approve. 



174 Sympathy 

I know so many good people who are 
anxious to increase happiness, but only on 
their own conditions; they feel that they 
estimate exactly what the quantity and 
quality of joy ought to be, and they treat 
the joy which they do not themselves feel as 
an offence against truth. It is from these 
beliefs, I have often thought, that much of 
the unhappiness of family circles arises, the 
elders not realising how the world moves 
on, how new iaeas come to the front, how 
the old hopes fade or are transmuted. They 
see their children liking different thoughts, 
different occupations, new books, new plea- 
sures; and instead of trying to enter into 
these things, to believe in their innocence 
and their naturalness, they try to crush and 
thwart them, with the result that the boys 
and girls just hide their feelings and desires, 
and if they are not shamed out of them, which 
sometimes happens, they hold them secretly 
and half sullenly, and plan how to escape 
as soon as they can from the tender and 
anxious constraint into a real world of their 



Elasticity 175 

own. And the saddest part of all is that the 
younger generation learn no experience thus ; 
but when they form a circle of their own and 
the same expansion happens, they do as 
their parents did, saying to themselves, "My 
parents lost my confidence by insisting on 
what was not really important; but my ob- 
jections are reasonable and justifiable, and 
my children must trust me to know what is 
right." 

We must realise then that elasticity and 
sympathy are the first of duties, and that if 
we embark upon the crusade of joy, we must 
do it expecting to find many kinds of joy 
at work in the world, and some which we 
cannot understand. We may of course 
mistrust destructive joy, the joy of selfish 
pleasure, rough combativeness, foolish waste- 
fulness, ugly riot — all the joys that are 
evidently dogged by sorrow and pain; but 
if we see any joy that leads to self-restraint 
and energy and usefulness and activity, we 
must recognise it as divine. 

We may have then our private fancies, 



176 Sympathy 

our happy pursuits, our sweet delights; we 
may practise them, sure that the best proof 
of their energy is that they obviously and 
plainly increase and multiply our own 
happiness. But if we direct others at all, 
it must be as a sign-post, pointing to a part- 
ing of roads and making the choice clear, 
and not as a policeman enforcing the majesty 
of our self -in vented laws. 

Everything that helps us, invigorates us, 
comforts us, sustains us, gives us life, is 
right for us ; of that we need never be in any 
doubt, provided always that our delight 
is not won at the expense of others; and we 
must allow and encourage exactly the same 
liberty in others to choose their own rest, 
their own pleasure, their own refreshment. 
What would one think of a host, whose one 
object was to make his guests eat and drink 
and do exactly what he himself enjoyed? 
And yet that is precisely what many of the 
most conscientious people are doing all day 
long, in other regions of the soul and mind. 

The one thing which we have to fear, in 



Effectiveness 177 

all this, is of lapsing into indolence and soli- 
tary enjoyment, guarding and hoarding our 
own happiness. We must measure the effec- 
tiveness of our enjoyment by one thing and 
one thing alone — our increase of affection 
and sympathy, our interest in other minds 
and lives. If we only end by desiring to be 
apart from it all, to gnaw the meat we have 
torn from life in a secret cave of our devising, 
to gain serenity by indifference, then we must 
put our desires aside; but if it sends us into 
the world with hope and energy and interest 
and above all affection, then we need have 
no anxiety; we may enter like the pilgrims 
into comfortable houses of refreshment, 
where we can look with interest at pictures 
and spiders and poultry and all the pleasant 
wonders of the place; we may halt in way- 
side arbours to taste cordials and confections, 
and enjoy from the breezy hill- top the 
pleasant vale of Beulah, with the celestial 
mountains rising blue and still upon the far 
horizon. 



XIX 

SCIENCE 

I READ the other day a very downright book, 
with a kind of dry insolence about it, by a 
man who was concerned with stating what 
he called the mechanistic theory of the uni- 
verse. The worlds, it seemed, were like a 
sandy desert, with a wind that whirled the 
sands about; and indeed I seemed, as I 
looked out on the world through the writer's 
eyes, to see nothing but wind and sand! 
One of his points was that every thought 
that passed through the mind was preceded 
by a change in the particles of the brain; so 
that philosophy, and religion, and life itself 
were nothing but a shifting of the sand by 
the impalpable wind — matter and motion, 
that was all! Again and again he said, in 
his dry way, that no theory was of any use 
178 



Molecular Action 179 

that was not supported by facts; and that 
though there was left a little corner of 
thought, which was still unexplained, we 
should soon have some more facts, and the 
last mystery would be hunted down. 

But it seemed to me, as I read it, that the 
thoughts of man were just as much facts as 
any other facts, and that when a man had a 
vision of beauty, or when a hope came to him 
in a bitter sorrow, it was just as real a thing 
as the little particle of the brain which 
stirred and crept nearer to another particle. 
I do not say that all theories of religion and 
philosophy are necessarily true, but they 
are real enough; they have existed, they 
exist, they cannot die. Of course, in making 
out a theory, we must not neglect one set of 
facts and depend wholly on another set 
of facts; but I believe that the intense and 
pathetic desire of humanity to know why 
they are here, why they feel as they do, 
why they suffer and rejoice, what awaits 
them, are facts just as significant as the 
blood that drips from the wound, or the 



i8o Science 

leaf that unfolds in the sun. The comfort- 
ing and uplifting conclusion which the writer 
came to was that we were just a set of ani- 
mated puppets, spun out of the drift of 
sand and dew by the thing that he called 
force. But if that is so, why are we not 
all perfectly complacent and contented, why 
do we love and grieve and wish to be differ- 
ent? I do still believe that there is a spirit 
that mingles with our hopes and dreams, 
something personal, beautifiil, fatherly, pure, 
something which is unwillingly tied to earth 
and would be free if it could. The sense 
that we are ourselves wholly separate and 
distinct, with experience behind us and ex- 
perience before us, seems to me a fact beside 
which all other facts pale into insignificance. 
And next in strength to that seems the fact 
that we can recognise, and draw near to, and 
be amazingly desirous of, as well as no less 
strangely hostile to, other similar selves; that 
our thought can mingle with theirs, pass into 
theirs, as theirs into ours, forging a bond 
which no accident of matter can dissolve. 



The Message of God i8i 

Does it really satisfy the lover, when he 
knows that his love is answered, to realise 
that it is all the result of some preceding 
molecular action of the brain? That does 
not seem to me so much a truculent state- 
ment as a foolish statement, shirking, like a 
glib and silly child, the most significant of 
data. And I think we shall do well to 
say to our scientist, as courteously as Sir 
Launcelot said to the officious knight, who 
proffered unnecessary service, that we have 
no need for him at this time. 

Now, I am not saying, in all this, that the 
investigation of science is wrong or futile. 
It is exactly the reverse; the message of 
God is hidden in all the minutest material 
things that lie about us; and it is a very 
natural and even noble work to explore it; 
but it is wrong if it leads us to draw any 
conclusions at present beyond what we can 
reasonably and justly draw. It is the infer- 
ence that what explains the visible scheme 
of things can also explain the invisible. 
That is wrong! 



i82 Science 

Let me here quote a noble sentence, which 
has often given me much-needed help, and 
served to remind me that thought is after all 
as real a thing as matter, when I have been 
tempted to feel otherwise. It was written 
by a very wise and tender philosopher, 
William James, who was never betrayed 
by his own severe standard of truth and 
reality into despising the common dreams 
and aspirations of simpler men. He wrote: 

*'I find it preposterous to suppose that if 
there be a feeling of unseen reality, shared 
by numbers of the best men in their best 
moments, responded to by other men in 
their deep moments, good to live by, strength- 
giving — I find it preposterous, I say, to 
suppose that the goodness of that feeling 
for living purposes should be held to carry 
no objective significance, and especially 
preposterous if it combines harmoniously 
with an otherwise grounded philosophy of 
objective truth.** 

That is a very large and tolerant utter- 
ance, both in its suspension of impatient 



Dogmatism 183 

certainties and in its beautiful sympathy 
with all ardent visions that cannot clearly 
and convincingly find logical utterance. 

What I am trying to say in this little book 
is not addressed to professional philosophers 
or men of science, who are concerned with 
intellectual investigation, but to those who 
have to live life as it is, as the vast majority 
of men must always do. What I rather beg 
of them is not to be alarmed and bewildered 
by the statements either of scientific or 
religious dogmatists. No doubt we should 
like to know everything, to have all our per- 
plexities resolved; but we have reached that 
point neither in religion nor in philosophy, 
nor even in science. We must be content 
not to know. But because we do not know, 
we need not therefore refuse to feel; there 
is no excuse for us to thrust the whole 
tangle away and out of sight, and just to do 
as far as possible what we like. We may 
admire and hope and love, and it is our 
business to do all three. The thing that 
seems to me — and I am here only stating a 



1 84 Science 

personal view — both possible and desirable, 
is to live as far as we can by the law of 
beauty, not to submit to anything by which 
our soul is shamed and insulted, not to be 
drawn into strife, not to fall into miserable 
fault-finding, not to allow ourselves to be 
fretted and fussed and agitated by the cares 
of life; but to say clearly to ourselves, 
*'that is a petty, base, mean thought, and I 
will not entertain it; this is a generous and 
kind and gracious thought, and I will wel- 
come it and obey it." 

One of the clearly discernible laws of life 
is that we can both check and contract 
habits; and when we begin our day, we can 
begin it if we will by prayer and aspiration 
and resolution, as much as we can begin it 
with bath and toilet. We can say, "I will 
live resolutely to-day in joy and good- 
humour and energy and kindliness. " Those 
powers and possibilities are all there; and 
even if we are overshadowed by disappoint- 
ment and anxiety and pain, we can say to 
ourselves that we will behave as if it were 



The Power of Choice 185 

not so; because there is undoubtedly a 
very real and noble pleasure in putting off 
shadows and troubles, and not letting them 
fall in showers on those about us. We need 
not be stoical or affectedly bright; we often 
cannot give those who love us greater joy 
than to tell them of our troubles and let 
them comfort us. And we can be practical 
too in our outlook, because much of the 
grittiest irritation of life is caused by in- 
dulging indolence when we ought not, and 
being hurried when we might be leisurely. 
It is astonishing how a little planning will 
help us in all this, and how soon a habit 
is set up. We do not, it is true, know the 
limits of our power of choice. But the illu- 
sion, if it be an illusion, that we have a 
power of choice, is an infinitely more real 
fact to most of us than the molecular motion 
of the brain particles. 

And then too there is another fact, which 
is becoming more and more clear, namely, 
what is called the power of suggestion. That 
if we can put a thought into our mind, not 



i86 Science 

into our reason, but into our inner mind of 
instinct and force, whether it be a base 
thought or a noble thought, it seems to soak 
unconsciously into the very stuff of the mind, 
and keep reproducing itself even when we 
seem to have forgotten all about it. And 
this is, I believe, one of the uses of prayer, 
that we put a thought into the mind, which 
can abide with us, secretly it may be, all the 
day; and that thus it is not a mere pious 
habit or tradition to have a quiet period at 
the beginning of the day, in which we can 
nurture some joyful and generous hope, 
but as real a source of strength to the spirit 
as the morning meal is to the body. I 
have myself found that it is well, if one 
can, to read a fragment of some fine, gen- 
erous, beautiful, or noble-minded book at 
such an hour. 

There is in many people who work hard 
with their brains a curious and unreal mood 
of sadness which hangs about the waking 
hour, which I have thought to be a sort of 
hunger of the mind, craving to be fed; and 



Suggestion 187 

this is accompanied, at least in me, by a very- 
swift, clear, and hopeful apprehension, so 
that a beautiful thought comes to me as a 
draught of water to a thirsty man. So I 
make haste, as often as may be, just to drop 
such a thought at those times into the mind; 
it falls to the depths, as one may see a bright 
coin go gleaming and shifting down to the 
depths of a pool; or to use a homelier simili- 
tude, like sugar that drops to the bottom of a 
cup, sweetening the draught. 

These are little homely things; but it is 
through simple use and not through large 
theory that one can best practise joy. 



XX 



WORK 



I CAME out of the low-arched door with a 
sense of reHef and passed into the sunshine ; 
the meeting had broken up, and we went 
our ways. We had sate there an hour or 
two in the old panelled room, a dozen full- 
blooded friendly men discussing a small 
matter with wonderful ingenuity and zest; 
and I had spoken neither least nor most 
mildly, and had foiind it all pleasant enough. 
Then I mounted my bicycle and rode out 
into the fragrant country alone, with all 
its nearer green and further blue; there in 
that little belt of space, between the thin 
air above and the dense-dark earth beneath, 
was the pageant of conscious life enacting 
itself so visibly and eagerly. In the sunlit 
sky the winds raced gaily enough, with the 
1 88 



Vivid Life 189 

void silence of moveless space above it; 
below my feet what depths of cold stone, 
with the secret springs; below that perhaps 
a core of molten heat and imprisoned fire ! 

What was it all about? What were we 
all doing there? What was the significance 
of the little business that had been engaging 
our minds and tongues? What part did it 
play in the mighty universe? 

The thorn-tree thick with bloom, pouring 
out its homely spicy smell — it was doing 
too, beautifully enough, what we had been 
doing clumsily. It was living, intent on its 
own conscious life, the sap hurrying, the 
scent flowing, the bud waxing. The yellow- 
hammer poising and darting along the hedge, 
the sparrow twittering round the rick, the 
cock picking and crowing, were all intent 
on life, proclaiming that they were alive and 
busy. Something vivid, alert, impassioned 
was going forward everywhere, something 
being effected, something uttered — and yet 
the cause how utterly hidden from me and 
from every living thing! 



190 Work 

The memory of old poetry began to flicker 
in my mind like summer lightning. In the 
orchard, crammed with bloom, two unseen 
children were calling to each other; a sun- 
burned, careless, graceful boy, whose rough 
clothes could not conceal his shapely limbs 
and easy movements, came driving some 
cows along the lane. He asked me the time 
in Dorian speech. The shepherds piping 
together on the Sicilian headland could not 
have made a fairer picture; and yet the boy 
and I could hardly have had a thought in 
common ! 

All the poets that ever sang in the pleasant 
springtime can hardly have felt the joyful 
onrush of the season more sweetly than I 
felt it that day; and yet no philosopher or 
priest could have given me a hint of what 
the mystery was, why so ceaselessly re- 
newed; but it was clear to me at least that 
the mind behind it was joyful enough, and 
wished me to share its joy. 

And then an hour later I was doing, for 
no reason but that it was my business, the 



Gymnastic 191 

dullest of tasks — no less than revising a 
whole sheaf of the driest of examination 
papers. Elaborate questions to elicit know- 
ledge of facts arid and meaningless, which 
it was worth no human being's while to 
know, unless he could fill out the bare 
outlines with some of the stuff of life. 
Hundreds of boys, I dare say, in crowded 
schoolrooms all over the country, were 
having those facts drummed into them, 
with no aim in sight but the answering of 
the questions which I was manipulating. 
That was a bewildering business, that we 
should insist on that sort of drilling becom- 
ing a part of life. Was that a relation it 
was well to establish? As the fine old, 
shrewd, indolent Dr. Johnson said, he for 
his part, while he lived, never again desired 
even to hear of the Punic War! And again 
he said, "You teach your daughters the 
diameters of the planets, and wonder, when 
you have done, why they do not desire your 
company.'* 

Cannot we somehow learn to simplify 



192 Work 

life? Must we continue to think that we 
can inspire children in rows? Is it not 
possible for us to be a little less important 
and pompous and elaborate about it all, to 
aim at more direct relations, to say more 
what we feel, to do more what nature bids 
us do? 

The heart sickens at the thought of how 
we keep to the grim highways of life, and 
leave the pleasant spaces of wood and field 
un visited! And all because we want more 
than we need, and because we cannot 
be content unless we can be envied and 
admired. 

The cure for all this, it seems to me, is 
a resolute avoidance of complications and 
intricacies, a determination to live life more 
on our own terms, and to open our eyes 
to the simpler pleasures which lie waiting 
in our way on every side. 

I do not believe in the elaborate organis- 
ation of life; and yet I think it is possible 
to live in the midst of it, and yet not to be 
involved in it. I do not believe in fierce 



Combat 193 

rebellion, but I do believe in quiet trans- 
formation; and here comes in the faith 
that I have in Joyous Gard. I believe that, 
day by day, we should clear a space to live 
with minds that have felt and hoped and 
enjoyed. That is the first duty of all; and 
then that we should live in touch with the 
natural beauty of the earth, and let the 
sweetness of it enter into our minds and 
hearts; for then we come out renewed, to 
find the beauty and the fulness of life in the 
hearts and minds of those about us. Life 
is complicated, not because its issues are 
not simple enough, but because we are most 
of us so afraid of a phantom which we create 
— the criticism of other human beings. 

If one reads the old books of chivalry, 
there seems an endless waste of combat 
and fighting among men who had the same 
cause at heart, and who yet for the pettiest 
occasions of dispute must needs try to inflict 
death on each other, each doing his best 
to shatter out of the world another human 
being who loved life as well. Two doughty 
13 



194 Work 

knights, Sir Lamorak and Sir Meliagraunce, 
must needs hew pieces off each other's 
armour, break each other's bones, spill each 
other's blood, to prove which of two ladies 
is the fairer; and when it is all over, nothing 
whatever is proved about the ladies, nothing 
but which of the two knights is the stronger! 
And yet we seem to be doing the same thing 
to this day, except that we now try to wound 
the heart and mind, to make a fellow-man 
afraid and suspicious, to take the light out 
of his day and the energy out of his work. 
For the last few weeks a handful of earnest 
clergymen have been endeavouring in a 
Church paper, with floods of pious Billings- 
gate, to make me ridiculous about a technical 
question of archaeological interest, and all 
because my opinion differs from their own! 
I thankfully confess that as I get older, I 
care not at all for such foolish controversy, 
and the only qualms I have are the qualms 
I feel at finding human beings so childish 
and so fretful. 

Well, it is all very curious, and not without 



Our Business 195 

its delight too! What I earnestly desire is 
that men and women should not thus waste 
precious time and pleasant life, but go 
straight to reality, to hope. There are a 
hundred paths that can be trodden; only 
let us be sure that we are treading our own 
path, not feebly shifting from track to 
track, not following too much the bidding 
of others, but knowing what interests us, 
what draws us, what we love and desire; 
and above all keeping in mind that it is 
our business to understand and admire and 
conciliate each other, whether we do it in 
a panelled room, with pens and paper on 
the table, and the committee in full cry; or 
out on the quiet road, with one whom we 
trust entirely, where the horizon runs, field 
by field and holt by holt, to meet the soft 
verge of encircling sky. 



XXI 

HOPE 

The other day I took up idly some magazine 
or other, one of those great lemon-coloured, 
salmon-hued, slaty paper volumes which lie 
in rows on the tables of my club. I will not 
stop now to inquire why English taste 
demands covers which show every mean 
stain, every soiled finger-print; but these 
volumes are always a reproach to me, be- 
cause they show me, alas! how many sub- 
jects, how many methods of presenting 
subjects, are wholly uninteresting and un- 
attractive to my trivial mind. This time, 
however, my eye fell upon a poem full of 
light and beauty, and of that subtle grace 
which seems so incomprehensible, so un- 
created — a lyric by Mr. Alfred Noyes. It 
was like a spell which banished for an in- 
196 



Pessimism 197 

slant the weariness born of a long, hot, 
tedious committee, the oppression which 
always falls on me at the sight and sound 
of the cataract of human beings and vehicles 
running so fiercely in the paved channels of 
London. A beautiful poem, but how im- 
measurably sad, an invocation to the memory 
and to the spirit of Robert Browning, not 
speaking of him in an elegiac strain as of a 
great poet who had lived his life to the full 
and struck his clear-toned harp, solemnly, 
sweetly, and whimsically too, year after 
year; but as of something great and noble 
wholly lost and separated from the living 
world. 

This is a little part of it : 

Singer of hope for all the world. 
Is it still morning where thou art, 

Or are the clouds that hide thee furled 
Around a dark and silent heart? 

The sacred chords thy hand could wake 
Are fallen on utter silence here, 

And hearts too little even to break 
Have made an idol of despair. 



198 Hope 

Come back to England, where thy May 
Returns, but not that rapturous light; 

God is not in His heaven to-day, 
And with thy country nought is right. 

I think that almost magically beautiful! 
But is it true? I hope not and I think not. 
The poet went on to say that Paradox had 
destroyed the sanctity of Truth, and that 
Science had done nothing more than strip 
the skeleton of the flesh and blood that 
vested it, and crown the anatomy with glory. 
One cannot speak more severely, more gloom- 
ily, of an age than to say that it is deceived 
by analysis and paradox, and cares nothing 
for nobler and finer things. It seems to me 
to be a sorrowful view of life that, to have 
very little faith or prospect about it. It is 
true indeed that the paradox-maker is popu- 
lar now; but that is because men are in- 
terested in interpretations of life; and it is 
true too that we are a little impatient now of 
fancy and imagination, and want to get at 
facts, because we feel that fancy and imagi- 
nation, which are not built on facts, are very 



Pessimism 199 

tricksy guides to life. But the view seems to 
me both depressed and morbid which cannot 
look beyond, and see that the world is pass- 
ing on in its own great imflinching, steady 
manner. It is like the view of a child who, 
confronted with a pain, a disagreeable inci- 
dent, a tedious day of drudgery, wails that 
it can never be happy again. 

The poem ends with a fine apostrophe to 
Browning as one "who stormed through 
death, and laid hold of Eternity." Did he 
indeed do that? I wish I felt it! He had 
of course, an unconquerable optimism, which 
argued promise from failure and perfection 
from incompleteness. But I cannot take 
such hopes on the word of another, however 
gallant and noble he may be. I do not 
want hopes which are only within the reach 
of the vivid and high-hearted; the crippled, 
drudging slave cannot rejoice because he 
sees his warrior-lord gay, heroic, and strong. 
I must build my creed on my own hopes and 
possibilities, not on the strength and cheer- 
fulness of another. 



200 Hope 

And then my eye fell on a sentence oppo- 
site, out of an article on our social problems; 
and this was what I read: 

" . . . the tears of a hunger-bitten philo- 
sophy, which is so appalled by the common 
doom of man — that he must eat his bread 
by the sweat of his brow — that it can talk, 
write, and think of nothing else. '* 

I think there is more promise in that, rough 
and even rude as the statement is, because 
it opens up a real hope for something that 
is coming, and is not a mere lamentation 
over a star that is set. 

*'A hunger-bitten philosophy'* — is it not 
rather that there is creeping into the world 
an uneasy sense that we must, if we are to 
be happy, share our happiness? It is not 
that the philosopher is hungry, it is that he 
cannot bear to think of all the other people 
who are condemned to hunger; and why it 
occupies his tongue and his pen, is that it 
clouds his serenity to know that others 
cannot now be serene. All this unrest, this 



Tolerance 201 

grasping at the comfort of life on the one 
hand, and the patience, the justice, the 
tolerance, with which such claims are viewed 
by many possessors on the other, is because 
there is a spirit of sympathy growing up, 
which has not yet become self-sacrifice, but 
is on its way to become so. 

Then we must ask ourselves what our 
duty is. Not, I think, with all our comforts 
about us, to chant loud odes about its being 
all right with the world, but to see what we 
can do to make it all right, to equalise, to 
share, to give. 

The finest thing, of course, wotdd be if 
those who are set in the midst of comfort 
could come calmly out of it, and live simpler, 
kinder, more direct lives; but apart from 
that, what can we do? Is it our duty, in 
the face of all that, to surrender every 
species of enjoyment and delight, to live 
meanly and anxiously because others have 
to live so? I am not at all sure that it 
would not prove our greatness if the thought 
of all the helpless pain and drudgery of 



202 Hope 

the world, the drift of falling tears, were so 
intolerable to us that we simply could not 
endure the thought; but I think that would 
end in quixotism and pessimism of the worst 
kind, if one would not eat or drink because 
men starve in Russia or India, if one would 
not sleep because sufferers toss through the 
night in pain. That seems a morbid and 
self-sought suffering. 

No, I believe that we must share our joy 
as far as we can, and that it is our duty 
rather to have joy to share, and to guard 
the quality of it, make it pure and true. 
We do best if we can so refine our happi- 
ness as to make it a thing which is not de- 
pendent upon wealth or ease; and the more 
natural our life is, the more can we be of use 
by the example which is not self-conscious 
but contagious, by showing that joy does not 
depend upon excitement and stimulus, but 
upon vivid using of the very stuff of life. 

Where we fail, many of us, is in the elabo- 
rateness of our pleasures, in the fact that 
we learn to be connoisseurs rather than 



The Academy 203 

viveurs, in losing our taste for the ancient 
wholesome activities and delights. 

I had caught an hour, that very day, to 
visit the Academy; it was a doubtful plea- 
sure, though if I could have had the great 
rooms to myself it would have been a de- 
lightful thing enough; but to be crushed 
and elbowed by such numbers of people 
who seemed intent not on looking at any- 
thing, but on trying to see if they could 
recognise any of their friends! It was a 
curious collection certainly! So many pic- 
tures of old disgraceful men, whose faces 
seemed like the faces of toads or magpies; 
dull, blinking, malign, or with the pert 
brightness of acquisition. There were pic- 
tures too of human life so-called, silly, 
romantic, insincerely posed; some fatuous 
allegorical things, like ill-staged melodra- 
mas; but the strength of English art came 
out for all that in the lovely landscapes, rich 
fields, summer streams, far-off woodlands, 
beating seas; and I felt in looking at it all 
that the pictures which moved one most 



204 Hope 

were those which gave one a sudden hunger 
for the joy and beauty of earth, not ill- 
imagined fantastic places, but scenes that 
one has looked upon a hundred times with 
love and contentment, the corn-field, the 
mill with its brimming leat, the bathing- 
place among quiet pastures, the lake set 
deep in water-plants, the old house in the 
twilight garden — all the things consecrated 
throughout long ages by use and life and 
joy. 

And then I strayed into the sculpture 
gallery; and I cannot describe the thrill 
which half a dozen of the busts there gave 
me — faces into which the wonder and the 
love and the pain of life seemed to have 
passed, and which gave me a sudden sense 
of that strange desire to claim a share in the 
past and present and future of the form and 
face in which one suddenly saw so much 
to love. One seemed to feel hands held out ; 
hearts crying for understanding and affection, 
breath on one's cheek, words in one's ears; 
and thus the whole gallery melted into a 



The Cry of Life 205 

great throng of signalling and beckoning 
presences, the air dense with the voices of 
spirits calling to me, pressing upon me; 
offering and claiming love, all bound upon 
one mysterious pilgrimage, none able to 
linger or to stay, and yet willing to clasp 
one close by the roadside, in wonder at the 
marvellous inscrutable power behind it all, 
which at the same moment seemed to say, 
"Rest here, love, be loved, enjoy," and at 
the same moment cried, "Go forward, ex- 
perience, endure, lament, come to an end." 

There again opened before one the awful 
mystery of the beauty and the grief of life, 
the double strain which we must somehow 
learn to combine, the craving for continuance, 
side by side with the knowledge of inter- 
ruption and silence. If one is real, the other 
cannot be real! And I for one have no 
doubt of which reality I hold to. Death and 
silence may deceive us; life and joy cannot. 
There may be something hidden beneath the 
seeming termination of mortal experience; 
indeed, I fully believe that there is ; but even 



2o6 Hope 

if it were not so, nothing could make love 
and joy unreal, or destroy the conscious- 
ness of what says within us, "This is I." 
Our one hope then is not to be deceived or 
beguiled or bewildered by the complexity 
and intricacy of life; the path of each of us 
lies clear and direct through the tangle. 

And thus, as I have said, our task is not 
to be defrauded of our interior peace. No 
power that we know can do more than dis- 
solve and transmute our mortal frame; it 
can melt into the earth, it can be carried into 
the depths of the sea, but it cannot be anni- 
hilated; and this is infinitely more true 
of our spirits; they may undergo a thousand 
transformations and transmutations, but 
they must be eternally there. 

So let us claim our experience bravely 
and accept it firmly, never daunted by it, 
never utterly despairing, leaping back into 
life and happiness as swiftly as we can, 
never doubting that it is assured to us. 
The time that we waste is that which is 
spent in anxious, trivial, conventional things. 



The Virtue of Forgetfulness 207 

We have to bear them in our burdens, many 
of us, but do not let us be for ever examining 
them, weighing them in our hands, wishing 
them away, whining over them; we must 
not let them beguile us of the better part. 
If the despairing part of us cries out that 
it is frightened, wearied, anxious, we must 
not heed it; we must again and again assure 
ourselves that the peace is there, and that 
we miss it by our own fault. Above all let 
us not make pitiable excuses for ourselves. 
We must be like the woman in the parable 
who, when she lost the coin, did not sit 
down to bewail her ill-luck, but swept the 
house diligently until she found it. There 
is no such thing as loss in the world; what 
we lose is merely withheld until we have 
earned the right to find it again. We must 
not cultivate repentance, we must not yield 
to remorse. The only thing worth having 
is a wholesome sorrow for not having done 
better; but it is ignoble to remember, if our 
remembrance has anything hopeless about 
it; and we do best utterly to forget our 



2o8 Hope 

failures and lapses, because of this we may 
be wholly sure, that joys are restored to 
us, that strength returns, and that peace 
beyond measure is waiting for us; and not 
only waiting for us, but as near us as a 
closed door in the room in which we sit. 
We can rise up, we can turn thither, we can 
enter if we will and when we will. 



XXII 

EXPERIENCE 

It is very strange to contemplate the steady- 
plunge of good advice, like a cataract of ice- 
cold water, into the brimming and dancing 
pool of youth and life, the maxims of moral- 
ists and sages, the epigrams of cynics, the 
sermons of priests, the good-humoured warn- 
ings of sensible men, all crying out that 
nothing is really worth the winning, that 
fame brings weariness and anxiety, that love 
is a fitful fever, that wealth is a heavy burden, 
that ambition is a hectic dream; to all of 
which ejaculations youth does not listen 
and cannot listen, but just goes on its eager 
way, trying its own experiments, believing 
in the delight of triumph and success, deter- 
mined, at all events, to test all for itself. 
All this confession of disillusionment and 

14 209 



210 Experience 

disappointment is true, but only partially 
true. The struggle, the effort, the per- 
severance, does bring fine things with it — 
things finer by far than the shining crown and 
the loud trumpets that attend it. 

The explanation of it seems to be that 
men require to be tempted to effort, by the 
dream of fame and wealth and leisure and 
imagined satisfaction. It is the experience 
that we need, though we do not know it; 
and experience, by itself, seems such a te- 
dious, dowdy, tattered thing, like a flag 
burnt by the sun, bedraggled by rain, torn 
by the onset, that it cannot by itself prove 
attractive. Men are heavily preoccupied 
with ends and aims, and the recognised 
values of the objects of desire and hope are 
often false and distorted values. So singu- 
larly constituted are we, that the hope of 
idleness is alluring, and some people are 
early deceived into habits of idleness, be- 
cause they cannot know what it is that 
lies on the further side of work. Of course 
the bodily life has to be supplied, but when 



Effort 211 

a man has all that he needs — let us say food 
and drink, a quiet shelter, a garden and a 
row of trees, a grassy meadow with a flow- 
ing stream, a congenial task, a household 
of his own — it seems not enough! Let 
us suppose all that granted to a man: he 
must consider next what kind of life he 
has gained; he has the cup in his hands; 
with what liquor is it to be filled? That 
is the point at which the imagination of 
man seems to fail ; he cannot set himself to 
vigorous, wholesome life for its own sake. 
He has to be ever looking past it and 
beyond it for something to yield him an 
added joy. 

Now, what we all have to do, if we can, 
is to regard life steadily and generously, to 
see that life, experience, emotion, are the 
real gifts; not things to be hurried through, 
thrust aside, disregarded, as a man makes a 
hasty meal before some occasion that excites 
him. One must not use life like the Passover 
feast, to be eaten with loins girded and staff 
in hand. It is there to be lived, and what 



212 Experience 

we have to do is to make the quality of it 
as fine as we can. 

We must provide then, if we can, a certain 
setting for life, a sufficiency of work and 
sustenance, and even leisure; and then we 
must give that no further thought. How 
many men do I not know, whose thought 
seems to be "when I have made enough 
money, when I have found my place, when 
I have arranged the apparatus of life about 
me, then I will live as I should wish to live. " 
But the stream of desires broadens and 
thickens, and the leisure hour never comes! 

We must not thus deceive ourselves. 
What we have to do is to make life, instantly 
and without delay, worthy to be lived. We 
must try to enjoy all that we have to do, 
and take care that we do not do what we 
do not enjoy, unless the hard task we set 
ourselves is sure to bring us something that 
we really need. It is useless thus to elabo- 
rate the cup of life, if we find, when we 
have made it, that the wine which should 
have filled it has long ago evaporated. 



The Wine of Life 213 

Can I say what I believe the wine of Hfe 
to be? I believe that it is a certain energy 
and richness of spirit, in which both mind 
and heart find full expression. We ought 
to rise day by day with a certain zest, a clear 
intention, a design to make the most out 
of every hour; not to let the busy hours 
shoulder each other, tread on each other's 
heels, but to force every action to give up 
its strength and sweetness. There is work 
to be done, and there are empty hours to be 
filled as well. It is happiest of all, for man 
and woman, if those hours can be filled, not 
as a duty but as a pleasure, by pleasing 
those whom we love and whose nearness is 
at once a delight. We ought to make time 
for that most of all. And then there ought 
to be some occupation, not enforced, to which 
we naturally wish to return. Exercise, gar- 
dening, handicraft, writing, even if it be only 
leisurely letters, music, reading — something 
to occupy the restless brain and hand; for 
there is no doubt that both physically and 
mentally we are not fit to be unoccupied. 



214 Experience 

But most of all, there must be something 
to quicken, enliven, practise the soul. We 
must not force this upon ourselves, or it will 
be fruitless and dreary; but neither must we 
let it lapse out of mere indolence. We must 
follow some law of beauty, in whatever way 
beauty appeals to us and calls us. We must 
not think that appeal a selfish thing, be- 
cause it is upon that and that alone that our 
power of increasing peace and hope and vital 
energy belongs. 

I have a man in mind who has a simple 
taste for books. He has a singularly pure 
and fine power of selecting and loving what 
is best in books. There is no self-con- 
sciousness about him, no critical contempt 
of the fancies of others; but his own love 
for what is beautiful is so modest, so per- 
fectly natural and unaffected, that it is 
impossible to hear him speak of the things 
that he loves without a desire rising up in 
one's mind to taste a pleasure which brings 
so much happiness to the owner. I have 
often talked with him about books that I had 



The Vivid Mind 215 

thought tiresome and dull; but he dis- 
entangles so deftly the underlying idea of 
the book, the thought that one must be on 
the look-out for the motive of the whole, 
that he has again and again sent me back 
to a book which I had thrown aside, with an 
added interest and perception. But the 
really notable thing is the effect on his own 
immediate circle. I do not think his family 
are naturally people of very high intelligence 
or ability. But his mind and heart seem to 
have permeated theirs, so that I know no 
group of persons who seem to have imbibed 
so simply, without strain or effort, a delight 
in what is good and profound. There is no 
sort of dryness about the atmosphere. It is 
not that they keep talk resolutely on their 
own subjects; it is merely that their outlook 
is so fresh and quick that everything seems 
alive and significant. One comes away from 
the house with a horizon strangely extended, 
and a sense that the world is full of live 
ideas and wonderful affairs. 

I despair of describing an effect so subtle. 



2i6 Experience 

so contagious. It is not in the least that 
everything becomes intellectual; that would 
be a rueful consequence; there is no parade 
of knowledge, but knowledge itself be- 
comes an exciting and entertaining thing, 
like a varied landscape. The wonder is, 
when one is with these people, that one did 
not see all the fine things that were staring 
one in the face all the time, the clues, the con- 
nections, the links. The best of it is that it 
is not a transient effect; it is rather like the 
implanting of a seed of fire, which spreads 
and glows, and burns unaided. 

It is this sacred fire of which we ought all 
to be in search. Fire is surely the most 
wonderful symbol in the world! We sit in 
our quiet rooms, feeling safe, serene, even 
chilly, yet everywhere about us, peacefully 
confined in all our furniture and belongings, 
is a mass of inflammability, stored with 
gases, which at a touch are capable of leap- 
ing into flame. I remember once being in a 
house in which a pile of wood in a cellar 
had caught fire; there was a short delay 



Flame 217 

while the hose was got out, and before an 
aperture into the burning room could be 
made. I went into a peaceful dining-room, 
which was just above the fire, and it was 
strangely appalling to see little puffs of 
smoke fly off from the kindled floor, while 
we tore the carpets up and flew to take the 
pictures down, and to know the room was 
all crammed with vehement cells, ready to 
burst into vapour at the fierce touch of the 
consuming element. 

I saw once a vast bonfire of wood kindled 
on a grassy hill-top; it was curiously affect- 
ing to see the great trunks melt into flame, 
and the red cataract pouring so softly, so 
unapproachably into the air. It is so with 
the minds of men; the material is all there, 
compressed, welded, inflammable; and if 
the fire can but leap into our spirits from 
some other burning heart, we may be amazed 
at the prodigal force and heat that can burst 
forth, the silent energy, the possibility of 
consumption. 

I hold it to be of supreme value to each of 



2i8 Experience 

us to try to introduce this fire of the heart 
into our spirits. It is not like mortal fire, a 
consuming, dangerous, truculent element. 
It is rather like the furnace of the engine, 
which can convert water into steam — the 
softest, feeblest, purest element into irre- 
sistible and irrepressible force. The mate- 
rials are all at hand in many a spirit that has 
never felt the glowing contact; and it is our 
business first to see that the elements are 
there, and then to receive with awe the fiery 
touch. It must be restrained, controlled, 
guarded, that fierce conflagration; but our 
joy cannot only consist of pure, clear, lam- 
bent, quiescent elements. It must have 
a heart of flame. 



XXIII 



FAITH 



We ought to learn to cultivate, train, regu- 
late emotion, just as we train other faculties. 
The world has hardly reached this point 
yet. First man trains his body that he may 
be strong, when strength is supreme. When 
almost the only argument is force, the man 
who is drawn to play a fine part in the world 
must above everything be strong, courageous, 
gallant, so that he may go to combat jo3^ul 
and serene, like a man inspired. Then 
when the world becomes civilised, when 
weakness combines against strength, when 
men do not settle differences of feeling by 
combat and war, but by peaceable devices 
like votes and arbitrations, the intellect 
comes to the front, and strength of body 
falls into the background as a pleasant 
219 



220 Faith 

enough thing, a matter of amusement or 
health, and intellect becomes the dominant 
force. But we shall advance beyond even 
that, and indeed we have begun to advance. 
Buddhism and the Stoic philosophy were 
movements dictated more by reason than by 
emotion, which recognised the elements of 
pain and sorrow as inseparable from human 
life, and suggested to man that the only 
way to conquer evils such as these was by 
turning the back upon them, cultivating 
indifference to them, and repressing the 
desires which issued in disappointment. 
Christianity was the first attempt of the 
human spirit to achieve a nobler conquest 
still; it taught men to abandon the idea of 
conquest altogether ; the Christian was meant 
to abjure ambition, not to resist oppression, 
not to meet violence by violence, but to 
yield rather than to fight. 

The metaphor of the Christian soldier 
is wholly alien to the spirit of the Gospel, 
and the attempt to establish a combative 
ideal of Christian life was one of the many 



The Christian 221 

concessions that Christianity in the hands 
of its later exponents made to the instincts 
of men. The conception of the Christian 
in the Gospel was that of a simple, uncom- 
plicated, uncalculating being, who was to 
be so absorbed in caring for others that the 
sense of his own rights and desires and aims 
was to fall wholly into the background. 
He is not represented as meant to have 
any intellectual, political, or artistic pur- 
suits at all. He is to accept his place in 
the world as he finds it; he is to have no 
use for money or comforts or accumulated 
resources. He is not to scheme for dignity 
or influence, nor even much to regard earthly 
ties. Sorrow, loss, pain, evil, are simply to 
be as shadows through which he passes, and 
if they have any meaning at all for him, they 
are to be opportunities for testing the 
strength of his emotions. But the whole spirit 
of the Christian revelation is that no terms 
should be made with the world at all. The 
world must treat the Christian as it will, and 
there are to be no reprisals; neither is there 



222 Faith 

the least touch of opportunism about it. The 
Christian is not to do the best he can, but 
the best ; he is frankly to aim at perfection. 

How then is this faith to be sustained? 
It is to be nourished by a sense of direct 
and frank converse with a God and Father. 
The Christian is never to have any doubt 
that the intention of the Father towards him 
is absolutely kind and good. He attempts 
no explanation of the existence of sin and 
pain; he simply endures them; and he looks 
forward with serene certainty to the con- 
tinued existence of the soul. There is 
no hint given of the conditions under which 
the soul is to continue its further life, of 
its desires or occupations; the intention 
obviously is that a Christian should live life 
freely and fully; but love, and interest in 
human relations are to supersede all other 
aims and desires. 

It has been often said that if the world 
were to accept the teaching of the Serm^on 
on the Mount literally, the social fabric of 
the world would be dissolved in a month. 



The Social Fabric 223 

It is true ; but it is not generally added that 
it would be because there would be no need 
of the social fabric. The reason why the 
social fabric would be dissolved is because 
there would doubtless be a minority which 
would not accept these principles, and would 
seize upon the things which the world agrees 
to consider desirable. The Christian ma- 
jority would become the slaves of the un- 
christian minority, and would be at their 
mercy. Christianity, in so far as it is a 
social system at all, is the purest kind of 
socialism, a socialism not of compulsion but 
of disinterestedness. It is easy, of course, to 
scoff at the possibility of so far disintegrating 
the vast and complex organisation of society 
as to arrange life on the simpler lines; but 
the fact remains that the very few people in 
the world's history, like St. Francis of Assisi, 
for instance, who have ever dared to live 
literally in the Christian manner, have had 
an immeasurable effect upon the hearts and 
imaginations of the world. The truth is not 
that life cannot be so lived, but that human- 



224 Faith 

ity dares not take the plunge; and that is 
what Christ meant when He said that few 
would find the narrow way. The really 
amazing thing is that such immense numbers 
of people have accepted Christianity in the 
world, and profess themselves Christians 
without the slightest doubt of their sincerity, 
who never regard the Christian principles at 
all. The chief aim, it would seem, of the 
Church, has been not to preserve the original 
revelation, but to accommodate it to human 
instincts and desires. It seems to me to 
resemble the very quaint and simple old 
Breton legend, which relates how the Saviour 
sent the Apostles out to sell stale fish as fresh; 
and when they returned unsuccessful. He was 
angry with them, and said, "How shall I 
make you into fishers of men, if you cannot 
even persuade simple people to buy stale 
fish for fresh?'* That is a very trenchant 
little allegory of ecclesiastical methods ! And 
perhaps it is even so that it has come to 
pass that Christianity is in a sense a failure, 
or rather an unfulfilled hope, because it has 



Christianity 225 

made terms with the world, has become 
pompous and respectable and mundane 
and influential and combative, and has de- 
liberately exalted civic duty above love. 

It seems to me that it is the business of 
all serious Christians deliberately to face 
this fact ; and equally it is not their business 
to try to destroy the social organisation of 
what is miscalled Christianity. That is as 
much a part of the world now as the Roman 
Empire was a part of the world when Christ 
came ; but we must not mistake it for Christ- 
ianity. Christianity is not a doctrine, or an 
organisation, or a ceremonial, or a society, 
but an atmosphere and a life. The essence 
of it is to train emotion, to believe and to 
practise the belief that all human beings have 
in them something interesting, lovable, beau- 
tiful, pathetic; and to make the recognition 
of that fact, the establishment of simple and 
kind relations with every single person with 
whom one is brought into contact, the one 
engrossing aim of life. Thus the essence of 
Christianity is in a sense artistic, because it 



226 Faith 

depends upon freely recognising the beauty 
both of the natural world and the human 
spirit. There are enough hints of this in the 
Gospel, in the tender observation of Christ, 
His love of flowers, birds, children, the fact 
that He noted and reproduced in His stories 
the beauty of the homely business of life, the 
processes of husbandry in field and vine- 
yard, the care of the sheepfold, the move- 
ment of the street, the games of boys and 
girls, the little festivals of life, the wedding 
and the party; all these things appear in 
His talk, and if more of it were recorded 
there would undoubtedly be more of such 
things. It is true that as opposition and 
strife gathered about Him, there falls a 
darker and sadder spirit upon the page, 
and the anxieties and ambitions of His fol- 
lowers reflect themselves in the record of 
denunciations and censures. But we must 
not be misled by this into thinking that the 
message is thus obscured. 

What then we have to do, if we would 
follow the pure Gospel, is to lead quiet lives, 



Christian Light- Heartedness 22^ 

refresh the spirit of joy within us by feeding 
our eyes and minds with the beautiful sounds 
and sights of nature, the birds* song, the 
opening faces of flowers, the spring woods, 
the winter sunset ; we must enter simply and 
freely into the life about us, not seeking 
to take a lead, to impress our views, to 
emphasise our own subjects; we must not 
get absorbed in toil or business, and still 
less in plans and intrigues; we must not 
protest against these things, but simply not 
care for them; we must not be burdensome 
to others in any way ; we must not be shocked 
or offended or disgusted, but tolerate, for- 
give, welcome, share. We must treat life 
in an eager, light-hearted way, not rue- 
fully or drearily or solemnly. The old 
language in which the Gospel comes to us, 
the formality of the antique phrasing, the 
natural tendency to make it dignified and 
hieratic, disguise from us how utterly natural 
and simple it all is. I do not think that 
reverence and tradition and awe have done 
us any more grievous injury than the fact 



228 Faith 

that we have made the Saviour into a figure 
with whom frank communication, eager, im- 
pulsive talk, would seem to be impossible. 
One thinks of Him, from pictures and from 
books, as grave, abstracted, chiding, pre- 
cise, mournfully kind, solemnly considerate. 
I believe it in my heart to have been wholly 
otherwise, and I think of Him as one with 
whom any simple and affectionate person, 
man, woman, or child, would have been 
entirely and instantly at ease. Like all 
idealistic and poetical natures, he had little 
use, I think, for laughter; those who are 
deeply interested in life and its issues care 
more for the beauty than the humour of life. 
But one sees a flash of humour here and 
there, as in the story of the unjust judge 
and of the children in the market-place ; and 
that He was disconcerting or cast a shadow 
upon natural talk and merriment I do not 
for an instant believe. 

And thus I think that the Christian has 
no right to be ashamed of light-heartedness ; 
indeed I believe that he ought to ctdtivate 



Christian Light-Heartedness 229 

and feed it in every possible way. He ought 
to be so unaffected, that he can change with- 
out the least incongruity from laughter to 
tears, sympathising with, entering into, de- 
veloping the moods of those about him. The 
moment that the Christian feels himself to 
be out of place and affronted by scenes of 
common resort — the market, the bar, the 
smoking-room — that moment his love of 
humanity fails him. He must be charming, 
attractive, genial, everywhere; for the sever- 
ance of goodness and charm is a most wretched 
matter; if he affects his company at all, it 
must be as innocent and beautiful girlhood 
affects a circle, by its guilelessness, its sweet- 
ness, its appeal. I have known Christians 
like this, wise, beloved, simple, gentle people, 
whose presence did not bring constraint but 
rather a perfect ease, and was an evocation 
of all that was best and finest in those near 
them. I am not recommending a kind of 
silly mildness, interested only in improving 
conversation, but rather a zest, a shrewdness, 
a bonhomie, not finding natural interests 



230 Faith 

common and unclean, but passionately de- 
voted to human nature — so impulsive, frail, 
unequal, irritable, pleasure-loving, but yet 
with that generous, sweet, wholesome fibre 
below, that seems to be evoked in crisis and 
trial from the most apparently worthless 
human beings. The outcasts of society, the 
sinful, the ill-regulated, would never have so 
congregated about our Saviour if they had 
felt Him to be shocked or indignant at sin. 
What they must rather have felt was that 
He understood them, loved them, desired 
their love, and drew out all the true and fine 
and eager and lovable part of them, because 
he knew it to be there, wished it to emerge. 
"He was such a comfortable person!" as a 
simple man once said to me of one of the best 
of Christians : '* If you had gone wrong, he did 
not find fault, but tried to see the way out; 
and if you were in pain or trouble, he said 
very little; you only felt it was all right 
when he was by." 



XXIV 

PROGRESS 

We must always hopefully and gladly 
remember that the great movements, doc- 
trines, thoughts, which have affected the life 
of the world most deeply, are those which 
are most truly based upon the best and 
truest needs of humanity. We need never 
be afraid of a new theory or a new doctrine 
because such things are never imposed upon 
an unwilling world, but owe their strength 
to the closeness with which they interpret 
the aims and wants of human beings. Still 
more hopeful is the knowledge which one 
gains from looking back at the history of 
the world, that no selfish, cruel, sensual, or 
wicked interpretation of life has ever estab- 
lished a vital hold upon men. The selfish 
and the cruel elements of humanity have 
231 



232 Progress 

never been able to band themselves to- 
gether against the power of good for very 
long, for the simple reason that those who 
are selfish and evil have a natural suspicion 
of other selfish and evil people; and no 
combination of men can ever be based upon 
anything but mutual trust and affection. 
And thus good has always a power of com- 
bination, while evil is naturally solitary and 
disjimctive. 

Take such an attempt as that of Nietzsche 
to establish a new theory of life. His theory 
of the superman is simply this, that the future 
of the world is in the hands of strong, com- 
bative, powerful, predatory people. Those 
are the supermen, a natural aristocracy 
of force and unscrupulousness and vigour. 
But such individuals carry with them the 
seed of their own failure, because even if 
Nietzsche's view that the weak and broken 
elements of humanity were doomed to perish, 
and ought even to be helped to perish, were 
a true view, even if his supermen at last 
survived, they must ultimately be matched 



Force of Christianity 233 

one against another in some monstrous and 
unflinching combat. 

Nietzsche held that the Christian doctrine 
of renunciation was but a translating into 
terms of a theory the discontent, the dis- 
appointment, the failure of the weak and 
diseased element of humanity, the slavish 
herd. He thought that Christianity was a 
glorification, a consecration of man's weak- 
ness and not of his strength. But he mis- 
judged it wholly. It is based in reality upon 
the noble element in humanity, the power 
of love and trust and unselfishness which 
rises superior to the ills of life; and the force 
of Christianity lies in the fact that it reveals 
to men the greatness of which they are 
capable, and the fact that no squalor or 
wretchedness of circumstances can bind 
the thought of man, if it is set upon what is 
high and pure. The man or woman who 
sees the beauty of inner purity cannot ever 
be very deeply tainted by corruption either 
of body or of soul. 

Renunciation is not a wholly passive 



234 Progress 

thing ; it is not a mere suspicion of all that is 
joyful, a dull abnegation of happiness. It is 
not that self-sacrifice means a frame of 
mind too despondent to enjoy, so fearful of 
every kind of pleasure that it has not the 
heart to take part in it. It is rather a 
vigorous discrimination between pleasure 
and joy, an austerity which is not deceived 
by selfish, obvious, apparent pleasure, but 
sees what sort of pleasure is innocent, 
natural, social, and what sort of pleasure is 
corroding, barren, and unreal. 

In the Christianity of the Gospel there is 
very little trace of asceticism. The delight 
in life is clearly indicated, and the only sort 
of self-denial that is taught is the self-denial 
that ends in simplicity of life, and in the 
joyful and courageous shouldering of in- 
evitable burdens. Self-denial was not to be 
practised in a spiritless and timid way, but 
rather as a man accepts the fatigues and 
dangers of an expedition, in a vigorous and 
adventurous mood. One does not think of 
the men who go on some Arctic exploration, 



Self-Restraint 235 

with all the restrictions of diet that they 
have to practise, all the uncomfortable rules 
of life they have to obey, as renouncing the 
joys of life; they do so naturally, in order 
that they may follow a livelier inspiration. 
It is clear from the accounts of primitive 
Christians that they impressed their heathen 
neighbours not as timid, anxious, and de- 
spondent people, but as men and women 
with some secret overflowing sense of joy 
and energy, and with a curious radiance 
and brightness about them which was not 
an affected pose, but the redundant hap- 
piness of those who have some glad know- 
ledge in heart and mind which they cannot 
repress. 

Let us suppose the case of a man gifted 
by nature with a great vitality, with a keen 
perception of all that is beautiful in life, all 
that is humorous, all that is delightful. 
Imagine him extremely sensitive to nature, 
art, human charm, human pleasure, doing 
everything with zest, interest, amusement, 
excitement. Imagine him, too, deeply sen- 



236 Progress 

sitive to affection, loving to be loved, grate- 
ful, kindly, fond of children and animals, a 
fervent lover, a romantic friend, alive to all 
fine human qualities. Suppose, too, that he 
is ambitious, desirous of fame, liking to play 
an active part in life, fond of work, wishing 
to sway opinion, eager that others should 
care for the things for which he cares. Well, 
he must make a certain choice, no doubt ; he 
cannot gratify all these things; his ambi- 
tion may get in the way of his pleasure, 
his affections may interrupt his ambitions. 
What is his renunciation to be? It obvious- 
ly will not be an abnegation of everything. 
He will not feel himself bound to crush all 
enjoyment, to refuse to love and be loved, 
to enter tamely and passively into life. He 
will inevitably choose what is dearest to his 
heart, whatever that may be, and he will no 
doubt instinctively eliminate from his life 
the joys which are most clouded by dis- 
satisfaction. If he sets affection aside for 
the sake of ambition, and then finds that the 
thought of the love he has slighted or dis- 



Renunciation 237 

regarded wounds and pains him, he will 
retrace his steps; if he sees that his ambitions 
leave him no time for his enjoyment of art 
or nature, and finds his success embittered 
by the loss of those other enjoyments, he 
will ctirb his ambition; but in all this he will 
not act anxiously and wretchedly. He will 
be rather like a man who has two simul- 
taneous pleasures offered him, one of which 
must exclude the other. He will not spoil 
both, but take what he desires most, and 
think no more of what he rejects. 

The more that such a man loves life, the 
less is he likely to be deceived by the shows 
of life; the more wisely will he judge what 
part of it is worth keeping, and the less will 
he be tempted by anything which distracts 
him from life itself. It is fulness of life, 
after all, that he is aiming at, and not va- 
cuity; and thus renunciation becomes not a 
feeble withdrawal from life, but a vigorous 
affirmation of the worth of it. 

But of course we cannot all expect to deal 
with life on this high-handed scale. The 



238 Progress 

question is what most of us, who feel our- 
selves sadly limited, incomplete, fractious, 
discontented, fitful, unequal to the claims 
upon us, should do. If we have no sense of 
eager adventure, but are afraid of life, over- 
shadowed by doubts and anxieties, with no 
great spring of pleasure, no passionate emo- 
tions, no very definite ambitions, what are 
we then to do? 

Or perhaps our case is even worse than 
that; we are meanly desirous of comfort, 
of untroulpled ease, we have a secret love 
of low pleasures, a desire to gain rather 
than to deserve admiration and respect, a 
temptation to fortify ourselves against life 
by accumulating all sorts of resources, with 
no particular wish to share anything, but 
aiming to be left alone in a circle which we 
can bend to our will and make useful to us; 
that is the hard case of many men and 
women; and even if by glimpses we see that 
there is a finer and a freer life outside, we 
may not be conscious of any real desire to 
issue from our stuffy parlour. 



The Rising Wall 239 

In either case our duty and our one hope 
is clear: that we have got somehow, at all 
costs and hazard, to find our way into the 
light of day. It is such as these, the anxious 
and the fearful on the one hand, the gross 
and sensual on the other, who need most of 
all a Joyous Card of their own. Because 
we are coming to the light, as Walt Whitman 
so splendidly says: — "The Lord advances 
and yet advances . . . always the shadow 
in front, always the reach'd hand bringing 
up the laggards." 

Our business, if we know that we are lag- 
gards, if we only dimly suspect it, is not to 
fear the shadow, but to seize the outstretched 
hands. We must grasp the smallest clue 
that leads out of the dark, the resolute fight 
with some slovenly and ugly habit, the tell- 
ing of our mean troubles to some one whose 
energy we admire and whose disapproval 
we dread; we must try the experiment, 
make the plunge; all at once we realise 
that the foundations are laid, that the wall 
is beginning to rise above the rubbish and 



240 Progress 

the debris; we must build a home for the 
new-found joy, even if as yet it only sings 
drowsily and faintly within our hearts, like 
the awaking bird in the dewy thicket, when 
the fingers of the dawn begin to raise the 
curtain of the night. 



XXV 

THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 

There is one difficulty which stands at the 
threshold of dealing with the sense of beauty 
so as to give it due importance and pre- 
ponderance, and that is it seems with many 
people to be so frail a thing, and to visit 
the mind only as the last grace of a mood 
of perfect serenity and well-being. Many 
people, and those not the least thoughtful 
and intelligent, find by experience that it is 
almost the first thing to disappear in moments 
of stress and pressure. Physical pain, grief, 
preoccupation, business, anxiety, all seem 
to have the power of quenching it instanta- 
neously, until one is apt to feel that it is 
a thing of infinite delicacy and tenderness, 
and can only co-exist with a tranquillity 
which it is hard in life to secure. The result 

16 241 



242 The Sense of Beauty 

of this no doubt is that many active-minded 
and forcible people are ready to think little 
of it, and just regard it as a mood that may 
accompany a well-earned holiday, and even 
so to be sparingly indulged. 

It is also undoubtedly true that in many 
robust and energetic people the sense of 
what is beautiful is so far atrophied that 
it can be roused only by scenes and places 
of almost melodramatic picturesqueness, 
by ancient buildings clustered on craggy 
eminences, great valleys with the frozen 
horns of mountains, wind-ravaged and snow- 
streaked, peering over forest edges, the 
thunder and splendour of great sea-breakers 
plunging landward under rugged headlands 
and cliff-fronts. But all this pursuit of sen- 
sational beauty is to mistake its quality; the 
moment it is thus pursued it ceases to be 
the milk and honey of life, and it becomes 
a kind of stimulant which excites rather 
than tranquillises. I do not mean that one 
should of set purpose avoid the sight of 
wonderful prospects and treasure-houses of 



Familiar Scenes 243 

art, or act as the poet Gray did when he 
was travelling with Horace Walpole in the 
Alps, when they drew up the blinds of their 
carriage to exclude the sight of such pro- 
digious and unmanning horrors! 

Still, I think that if one is on the right 
track, and if beauty has its due place and 
value in life, there will be less and less 
impulse to go far afield for it, in search of 
something to thrill the dull perception and 
quicken it into life. I believe that people 
ought to be content to live most of their 
lives in the same place, and to grow to love 
familiar scenes. Familiarity with a scene 
ought not to result in the obliteration of all 
consciousness of it : one ought rather to find 
in use and affection and increased power 
of subtle interpretation, a closer and finer 
understanding of the qualities which under- 
lie the very simplest of English landscapes. 
I live, myself, for most of the year in a 
countryside that is often spoken of by its 
inhabitants as dull, tame, and featureless; 
yet I cannot say with what daily renewal 



244 The Sense of Beauty 

of delight I wander in the pastoral Cam- 
bridge landscape, with its long low lines 
of wold, its white walled, straw- thatched 
villages embowered in orchards and elms, 
its slow willow-bound streams, its level 
fenland, with the far-seen cloud-banks 
looming overhead: or again in the high- 
ridged, well-wooded land of Sussex, where 
I often live, the pure lines of the distant 
downs seen over the richly coloured inter- 
vening weald grow daily more dear and 
intimate, and appeal more and more closely 
to the deepest secrets of sweetness and 
delight. For as we train ourselves to the 
perception of beauty, we become more and 
more alive to a fine simplicity of effect; we 
find the lavish accumulation of rich and mag- 
nificent glories bewildering and distracting. 
And this is the same with other arts; we 
no longer crave to be dazzled and flooded 
by passionate and exciting sensation, we 
care less and less for studied mosaics of 
word and thought, and more and more for 
clearness and form and economy and aus- 



Austerity in Art 245 

terity. Restless exuberance becomes un- 
welcome, complexity and intricacy weary 
us ; we begin to perceive the beauty of what 
Fitzgerald called the ''great still books." 
We do not desire a kaleidoscopic pageant of 
blending and colliding emotions, but crave 
for something distinctly seen, entirely 
grasped, perfectly developed. Because we 
are no longer in search of something stimu- 
lating and exciting, something to make us 
glide and dart among the surge and spray 
of life, but what we crave for is rather a 
calm and reposeful absorption in a thought 
which can yield us all its beauty, and assure 
us of the existence of a principle in which 
we can rest and abide. As life goes on, we 
ought not to find relief from tedium only 
in a swift interchange and multiplication of 
sensations; we ought rather to attain a 
simple and sustained joyfulness which can 
find nurture in homely and familiar things. 

If again the sense of beauty is so frail a 
thing that it is at the mercy of all intruding 
and jarring elements, it is also one of the 



246 The Sense of Beauty 

most patient and persistent of quiet forces. 
Like the darting fly which we scare from us, 
it returns again and again to settle on the 
spot which it has chosen. There are, it is 
true, troubled and anxious hours when the 
beauty round us seems a cruel and intrusive 
thing, mocking us with a peace which we 
cannot realise, and torturing us with the 
reminder of the joy we have lost. There 
are days when the only way to forget our 
misery is to absorb ourselves in some practi- 
cal energy; but that is because we have not 
learned to love beauty in the right way. 
If we have only thought of it as a pleasant 
ingredient in our cup of joy, as a thing which 
we can use just as we can use wine, to give us 
an added flush of unreasonable content, then 
it will fail us when we need it most. When a 
man is under the shadow of a bereavement, 
he can test for himself how he has used love. 
If he finds that the loving looks and words 
and caresses of those that are left to him are 
a mere torture to him, then he has used love 
wrongly, just as a selfish and agreeable 



The Message of Beauty 247 

delight; but if he finds strength and comfort 
in the yearning sympathy of friend and 
beloved, reassurance in the strength of the 
love that is left him, and confidence in the 
indestructibility of affection, then he has 
used love wisely and purely, loving it for 
itself, for its beauty and holiness, and not 
only for the warmth and comfort it has 
brought him. 

So, if we have loved beauty well, have 
seen in it a promise of ultimate joy, a sign 
of a deliberate intention, a message from a 
power that does not send sorrow and anxiety 
wantonly, cruelly and indifferently, an assur- 
ance of something that waits to welcome 
and bless us, then beauty is not a mere 
torturing menace, a heartless and unkind 
parading of joy which we cannot feel, but 
a faithful pledge of something secure and 
everlasting, which will return to us again 
and again in ever fuller measure, even if the 
flow of it be sometimes suspended. 

We ought then to train and practise our 
sense of beauty, not selfishly and luxuriously, 



248 The Sense of Beauty 

but so that when the dark hour comes it may 
help us to realise that all is not lost, may 
alleviate our pain by giving us the know- 
ledge that the darkness is the interruption, 
but that the joy is permanent and deep and 
certain. 

Thus beauty, instead of being for us but 
as the melody swiftly played when our 
hearts are high, a mere momentary ray, 
a happy accident that befalls us, may 
become to us a deep and vital spring of 
love and hope, of which we may say that 
it is there waiting for us, like the home that 
awaits the traveller over the weary upland 
at the foot of the far-looming hill. It may 
come to us as a perpetual sign that we are 
not forgotten, and that the joy of which it 
makes mention survives all interludes of 
strife and uneasiness. It is easy to slight 
and overlook it, but if we do that, we are 
deluded by the passing storm into believing 
that confusion and not peace is the end. 
As George Meredith nobly wrote, during 
the tragic and fatal illness of his wife, "Here 



Further Brightness 249 

I am in the very pits of tragic life. . . . 
Happily for me, I have learned to live much 
in the spirit, and see brightness on the other 
side of life, otherwise this running of my 
poor doe with the inextricable arrow in her 
flanks would pull me down too.** The 
spirit, the brightness of the other side, that 
is the secret which beauty can communicate, 
and the message which she bears upon her 
radiant wings. 



XXVI 

THE PRINCIPLE OF BEAUTY 

" I HAVE loved, " said Keats, "the principle of 
beauty in all things." It is that to which 
all I have said has been leading, as many 
roads unite in one. We must try to use dis- 
crimination, not to be so optimistic that 
we see beauty if it is not there, not to over- 
whelm every fling that every craftsman has 
at beauty with gush and panegyric; not to 
praise beauty in all companies, or to go off 
like a ripe broom-pod, at a touch. When 
Walter Pater was confronted with something 
which courtesy demanded that he should 
seem to admire, he used to say in that soft 
voice of his, which lingered over emphatic 
syllables, "Very costly, no doubt!" 

But we must be generous to all beautiful 
intention, and quick to see any faintest 
250 



The Use of Beauty 251 

beckoning of the divine quality; and indeed 
I would not have most people aim at too 
critical an attitude, for I believe it is more 
important to enjoy than to appraise; still 
we must keep the principle in sight, and not 
degenerate into mere collectors of beautiful 
impressions. If we simply try to wallow in 
beauty, we are using it sensually; while if 
on the other hand we aim at correctness of 
taste, which is but the faculty of sincere 
concurrence with the artistic standards of 
the day, we come to a sterile connoisseur- 
ship which has no living inspiration about it. 
It is the temperate use of beauty which we 
must aim at, and a certain candour of obser- 
vation, looking at all things, neither that we 
may condemn if we can, nor that we may 
luxuriously abandon ourselves to sensation, 
but that we may draw from contemplation 
something of the inner light of life. 

I have not here said much about the arts 
— music, sculpture, painting, architecture — 
because I do not want to recommend any 
specialisation in beauty. I know, indeed, 



2S2 The Principle of Beauty 

several high-minded people, diligent, un- 
original, faithful, who have begun by re- 
cognising in a philosophical way the worth 
and force of beauty, but who, having no 
direct instinct for it, have bemused them- 
selves by conventional and conscientious 
study, into the belief that they are on the 
track of beauty in art, when they have no 
real appreciation of it at all, no appetite for 
it, but are only bent on perfecting tempera- 
ment, and whose unconscious motive has 
been but a fear of not being in sympathy 
with men whose ardour they admire, but 
whose love of beauty they do not really 
share. Such people tend to gravitate to 
early Italian painting, because of its historical 
associations, and because it can be cate- 
gorically studied. They become what is 
called "purists," which means little more 
than a learned submissiveness. In litera- 
ture they are found to admire Carlyle, 
Ruskin, and Browning, not because of their 
method of treating thought, but because of 
the ethical maxims imbedded — as though one 



The Right Angle 253 

were to love a conserve of plums for the 
sake of the stones! 

One should love great writers and great 
artists not because of their great thoughts — 
there are plenty of inferior writers who 
traffic in great thoughts — but because great 
artists and writers are the people who can 
irradiate with a heavenly sort of light com- 
mon thoughts and motives, so as to show 
the beauty which underlies them and the 
splendour that breaks from them. It is 
possible to treat fine thoughts in a heavy 
way so as to deprive them of all their rarity 
and inspiration. The Gospel contains some 
of the most beautiftd thoughts in the world, 
beautiful because they are common thoughts 
which everyone recognises to be true, yet set 
in a certain light, just as the sunset with its 
level, golden, remote glow has the power of 
transfiguring a familiar scene with a glory of 
mystery and desire. But one has but to turn 
over a volume of dull sermons, or the pages 
of a dreary commentary, to find the thoughts 
of the Gospel transformed into something 



254 The Principle of Beauty 

that seems commonplace and uninspiring. 
The beauty of ordinary things depends upon 
the angle at which you see them and the 
light which falls upon them; and the work 
of the great artist and the great writer is to 
show things at the right angle, and to shut 
off the confusing muddled cross-lights which 
conceal the quality of the thing seen. 

The recognition of the principle of beauty 
lies in the assurance that many things have 
beauty, if rightly viewed, and in the deter- 
mination to see things in the true light. 
Thus the soul that desires to see beauty must 
begin by believing it to be there, must 
expect to see it, must watch for it, must not 
be discouraged by those who do not see it, 
and least of all give heed to those who would 
forbid one to discern it except in definite 
and approved forms. The worst of aesthetic 
prophets is that, like the Scribes, they make 
a fence about the law, and try to convert the 
search for principle into the accumulation of 
detailed tenets. 

Let us then never attempt to limit beauty 



Beauty of Life 255 

to definite artistic lines; that is the mistake 
of the superstitious formaHst who Hmits 
divine influences to certain sanctuaries and 
fixed ceremonials. The use of the sanctuary 
and the ceremonial is only to concentrate at 
one fiery point the wide current of impulsive 
ardour. The true lover of beauty will await 
it everywhere, will see it in the town, with 
its rising roofs and its bleached and black- 
ened steeples, in the seaport with its quaint 
crowded shipping, in the clustered hamlet 
with its orchard-closes and high-roofed barns, 
in the remote country with its wide fields and 
its converging lines, in the beating of the 
sea on shingle-bank and promontory; and 
then if he sees it there, he will see it con- 
centrated and emphasised in pictures of 
these things, the beauty of which lies so 
often in the sense of the loving apprehension 
of the mystery of lights and hues; and then 
he will trace the same subtle spirit in the 
forms and gestures and expressions of those 
among whom he lives, and will go deeper 
yet and trace the same spirit in conduct and 



256 The Principle of Beauty 

behaviour, in the free and gallant handling 
of life, in the suppression of mean personal 
desires, in doing dull and disagreeable things 
with a fine end in view, in the noble affection 
of the simplest people; until he becomes 
aware that it is a quality which runs through 
everything he sees or hears or feels, and 
that the eternal difference is whether one 
views things dully and stupidly, regarding 
the moment hungrily and greedily, as a dog 
regards a plateful of food, or whether one 
looks at it all as a process which has some 
fine and distant end in view, and sees that all 
experience, whether it be of things tangible 
and visible, or of things intellectual and 
spiritual, is only precious because it carries 
one forward, forms, moulds, and changes 
one with a hope of some high and pure 
resurrection out of things base and hurried 
into things noble and serene. 

The need, the absolute need for all and 
each of us, is to find something strong and 
great to rest and repose upon. Otherwise 
one simply falls back on the fact that one 



The Clearer Vision 257 

exists and on the whole enjoys existing, 
while one shuns the pain and darkness of 
ceasing to exist. As life goes on, there 
comes such an impulse to say, "Life is 
attractive and might be pleasant, but there 
is always something shadowing it, spoiling 
it, gnawing at it, a worm in the bud, of 
which one cannot be rid. " And so one sinks 
into a despairing apathy. 

What then is one born for? Just to live 
and forget, to be hurt and healed, to be 
strong and grow weak? That as the spirit 
falls into faintness, the body should curdle 
into worse than dust? To give each a 
memory of things sharp and sweet, that no 
one else remembers, and then to destroy 
that? 

No, that is not the end ! The end is rather 
to live fully and ardently, to recognise the 
indestructibility of the spirit, to strip off 
from it all that wounds and disables it, not 
by drearily toiling against haunting faults, 
but by rising as often as we can into serene 
ardour and deep hopefulness. That is the 



258 The Principle of Beauty 

principle of beauty, to feel that there is 
something transforming and ennobling us, 
which we can lay hold of if we wish, and 
that every time we see the great spirit at 
work and clasp it close to our feeble will, 
we soar a step higher and see all things with 
a wider and a clearer vision. 



XXVII 



LIFE 



But in all this, and indeed beyond all this, 
we must not dare to forget one thing; that 
it is life with which we are confronted, and 
that our business is to live it, and to live it 
in our own way; and here we may thank- 
fully rejoice that there is less and less ten- 
dency in the world for people to dictate 
modes of life to us; the tyrant and the 
despot are not only out of date — they are 
out of fashion, which is a far more disabling 
thing! There is of course a type of person 
in the world who loves to call himself robust 
and even virile — heaven help us to break 
down that bestial ideal of manhood! — who 
is of the stuff of which all bullies have been 
made since the world began, a compound 
of courage, stupidity, and complacency; to 
259 



26o Life 

whom the word ** living*' has no meaning, 
unless it implies the disturbing and dis- 
quieting of other people. We are gradually- 
putting him in his right place, and the 
kindlier future will have little need of him; 
because a sense is gradually shaping itself in 
the world that life is best lived on peaceful 
and orderly lines. 

But if the robust viveur is on the wrong 
tack, so long as he grabs and uses, and 
neither gives nor is used, so too the more 
peaceable and poetical nature makes a very 
similar mistake, if his whole heart is bent 
upon receiving and enjoying; for he too is 
filching and conveying away pleasure out 
of life, though he may do it more timidly 
and unobtrusively. Such a man or woman 
is apt to make too much out of the occasions 
and excitements of life, to over-value the 
aesthetic kind of success, which is the delicate 
impressing of other people, claiming their 
admiration and applause, and being ill- 
content if one is not noticed and praised. 
Such an one is apt to overlook the common 



The Stuff of Life 261 

stuff and use of life — the toil, the endurance, 
the discipline of it; to flutter abroad only 
on sunshiny days, and to sit sullenly with 
folded wing when the sky breaks into rain 
and chilly winds are blowing. The man 
who lives thus, is in danger of over-valuing 
the raptures and thrills of life, of being fitful 
and moody and fretful; what he has to do 
is to spread serenity over his days, and 
above all to be ready to combine, to minister, 
to sympathise, to serve. Joyous Card is a 
very perilous place, if we grow too indolent 
to leave it; the essence of it is refreshment 
and not continuance. There are two con- 
ditions attached to the use of it : one is that 
we should have our own wholesome work 
in the world, and the second that we should 
not grow too wholly absorbed in labour. 

No great moral leaders and inspirers of 
men have ever laid stress on excessive 
labour. They have accepted work as one 
of the normal conditions of life, but their 
whole effort has been to teach men to look 
away from work, to find leisure to be happy 



262 Life 

and good. There is no essential merit in 
work, apart from its necessity. Of course 
men may find themselves in positions where 
it seems hard to avoid a fierce absorption 
in work. It is said by legislators that the 
House of Commons, for instance, is a place 
where one can neither work nor rest ! And I 
have heard busy men in high administrative 
office, deplore rhetorically the fact that 
they have no time to read or think. It is 
almost as unwholesome never to read or 
think as it is to be always reading and 
thinking, because the light and the inspira- 
tion fade out of life, and leave one a gaunt 
and wolfish lobbyist, who goes about seeking 
whom he may indoctrinate. But I have 
little doubt that when the world is organised 
on simpler lines, we shall look back to this 
era, as an era when men's heads were turned 
by work, and when more unnecessary things 
were made and done and said than has ever 
been the case since the world began. 

The essence of happy living is never to 
find life dull, never to feel the ugly weari- 



Freshness 263 

ness which comes of overstrain; to be fresh, 
cheerful, leisurely, sociable, unhurried, well- 
balanced. It seems to me that it is impos- 
sible to be these things unless we have time 
to consider life a little, to deliberate, to select, 
to abstain. We must not help ourselves 
either to work or to joy as if we were help- 
ing ourselves to potatoes! If life ought 
not to be perpetual drudgery, neither can 
it be a perpetual feast. What I believe we 
ought to aim at is to put interest and zest 
into the simplest acts, words, and relations 
of life, to discern the quality of work and 
people alike. We must not turn our whole 
minds and hearts to literature or art or 
work, or even to religion; but we must go 
deeper, and look close at life itself, which 
these interpret and out of which they flow. 
For indeed life is nobler and richer than any 
one interpretation of it. Let us take for a 
moment one of the great interpreters of life, 
Robert Browning, who was so intensely 
interested above all things in personality. 
The charm of his writing is that he con- 



264 Life 

trives, by some fine instinct, to get behind 
and within the people of whom he writes, 
sees with their eyes, hears with their ears, 
though he speaks with his own Hps. But 
one must observe that the judgment of none 
of his characters is a final judgment; the 
artist, the lover, the cynic, the charlatan, 
the sage, the priest — they none of them 
provide a solution to life; they set out on 
their quest, they make their guesses, they 
reveal their aims, but they never penetrate 
the inner secret. It is all inference and 
hope; Browning himself seems to believe 
in life, not because of the reasons which 
his characters give for believing in it, but 
in spite of all their reasons. Like little 
boats, the reasons seem to strand one by 
one, some sooner, some later, on the sands 
beneath the shallow sea; and then the great 
serene large faith of the poet comes flooding 
in, and bears them on their way. 

It is somewhat thus that we must deal 
with life; it is no good making up a philo- 
sophy which just keeps us gay when all is 



Animation 265 

serene and prosperous. Unpleasant, te- 
dious, vexing, humiliating, painful, shatter- 
ing things befall us all by the way. That is 
the test of our belief in life, if nothing daunts 
us, if nothing really mars our serenity of 
mood. 

And so what this Httle book of mine tries 
to recommend is that we should bestir our- 
selves to design, plan, use, practise life; not 
drift helplessly on its current, shouting for 
joy when all is bright, helplessly bemoaning 
ourselves when all is dark; and that we 
should do this by guarding ourselves from 
impulse and whim, by feeding our minds 
and hearts on all the great words, high 
examples, patient endurances, splendid acts, 
of those whom we recognise to have been 
the finer sort of men. One of the greatest 
blessings of oiu: time is that we can do that 
so easily. In the dullest, most monotonous 
life we can stay ourselves upon this heavenly 
manna, if we have the mind. We need not 
feel alone or misunderstood or unappre- 
ciated, even if we are surrounded by harsh. 



266 Life 

foolish, dry, discontented, mournful persons. 
The world is fuller now than it ever was of 
brave and kindly people who will help us 
if we ask for help. Of course if we choose 
to perish without a struggle, we can do that. 
And my last word of advice to people into 
whose hands this book may fall, who are 
suffering from a sense of dim failure, timid 
bewilderment, with a vague desire in the 
background to make something finer and 
stronger out of life, is to turn to some one 
whom they can trust — not intending to 
depend constantly and helplessly upon them 
— and to get set in the right road. 

Of course, as I have said, care and sorrow, 
heaviness and sadness — even disillusion- 
ment — must come; but the reason of that 
is because we must not settle too close to 
the sweet and kindly earth, but be ready 
to unfurl our wings for the passage over 
sea; and to what new country of God, what 
unknown troops and societies of human 
spirits, what gracious reality of dwelling- 
place, of which our beloved fields and woods 



Beyond 267 

and streams are nothing but the gentle and 
sweet symbols, our flight may bear us, I 
cannot tell; but that we are all in the mind 
of. God, and that we cannot wander beyond 
the reach of His hand or the love of His 
heart, of this I am more sure than I am 
of anything else in this world where 
familiarity and mystery are so strangely 
entwined. 



THE END 



By Arthur Christopher Benson 

Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge 

FAMILIAR essays are rare, and far rarer 
than more formal critical writings of a 
like quality. It is with this literary 
kind that Mr. Benson's work — the best of it 
at least — is to be classed. His books are the 
frank outpourings of the author's innermost 
thoughts, and treat, in an easy confidential 
manner that presupposes a single friendly 
listener, matters that *'go home to men's 
business and bosoms." 

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passed his time with pleasure and profit. 
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determine whether he has been better pleased 
with the substantial thought of the book or 
with the urbanity and gentlemanlike ease, 
the freshness and distinction of the diction, 
the fluency, and the varied cadences that 
combine to make this new essayist's style so 
charming, and charge it with the magnetism 
of a singularly interesting and attractive 
personality. 



By Arthur Christopher Benson 

Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge 

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Mr. Benson presents biographical sketches and appreciations of 
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